Expansion 


.i>.~^ 


Alfred  Rambaud 


•^ggg!=»SS:^5i^r;^i;y£i't^?H:5^--?^^«S^.L;S5^;J^ 


'l:i^3:-.:^ii!a 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


FROM  THE  LIBRARY  OF 
FRANK  J.  KLINGBERG 


^fcfc 


i 


/'    / 


Digitized  by  tine  Internet  Arciiive 

in  2008  witii  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


littp://www.arcliive.org/details/expansionofrussiOOramb 


THE 

EXPANSION   OF  RUSSIA 

PROBLEMS  OF  THE  EAST  AND   PROBLEMS 
OF  THE  FAR  EAST. 


BY 

ALFRED  /RAMBAUD. 


■-:    BURLINGTON,  VERMONT: 
THE  INTERNATIONAL  MONTHLY. 
-;^  1900. 


Copyright  by 

FREDERICK  A.   RICHARDSON, 

1900. 


DK 


I  I 


/^?.  e_ 


ADVERTISEMENT. 

Books  upon  Russia,  her  people  and  history 
are  attracting  their  share  of  attention.  That 
great,  mysterious,  distant  empire,  with  a  con- 
tinuous history  of  conquests  since  the  day  when 
the  Mongol  yoke  was  thrown  off,  with  an 
heroic  age  whose  traditions  are  as  attractive  as 
any  of  Western  Europe  ;  an  absolute  despotism, 
rooted  in  the  despotism  of  its  former  Asiatic 
conquerors,  superseding  the  more  primitive  but 
freer  communities,  having  the  one  aim  since  the 
time  of  Peter  the  Great,  to  find  an  outlet  on 
an  unfrozen  sea.  Baffled  in  Southeastern  Eu- 
rope, Russia  has  pressed  at  the  points  of  least 
resistance  until  now  she  is  about  to  emerge  on 
the  Persian  Gulf,  as  she  has  already  on  the 
shores  of  Manchuria. 

Great  Britain  and  Russia,  "the  elephant 
and  the  whale,  "  the  great  rivals  in  Asia,  so 
different  in  their  origins,  their  constitutions, 
their  power  of  assimilation,  are  now  face  to  face. 

M.  Alfred  Rambaud,  the  author  of  a  history 
of  Russia  which  was  at  once  recognized  by 
Russian  and  British  students  of  Russian  history 
as  most  authoritative  and  the  best  of  all  ac- 
cessible histories,  is  a  Senator  of  France  and 
has  held  important  government  positions.  He 
is    the    translator  of    Seeley's    "  Expansion    of 


15S935r 


England"  and  has  written  many  important 
works,  relating  to  his  own  country  and  Russia. 
He  is  a  member  of  the  Institute  and  his  "  History 
of  Russia  "  was  crowned  by  the  French  Acad- 
emy in  1883. 

The  present  little  volume  is  a  reprint  of  an 
essay  written  for  The  International 
Monthly  and  first  printed  in  the  September 
and  October  issues  of  that  journal.  It  meets 
the  demand  for  a  condensed  yet  authoritative 
history  of  that  Russia  known  to  the  world.  The 
onward  course  of  Russia  is  forcibly  told  in 
these  pages.  The  great  demand  for  the  maga- 
zine numbers  has  induced  the  publishers  to 
issue  the  essay  separately,  with  a  table  of  con- 
tents and  divided  into  chapters  with  topical 
headings,  knowing  that  as  a  brief  presentation 
of  Russia's  development,  her  aims,  and  prob- 
abilities of  success,  there  is  no  other  book 
accessible  to  the  American  public  which  sur- 
passes it. 


CONTENTS : 

Chapter  I. — The  Origin  of  the  Russian  State  and  Nation. 
The  Tartar-Mongols.  Principality  of  Moscow.  The 
Unity  of  Russia.  Isolation.  The  Aim  of  Russian  Diplo- 
macy. 

Chapter  II. — Peter  the  Great.  Poland.  The  Eastern  Ques- 
tion. Latin  and  Greek  Churches.  Catherine  the 
Great.  Turkish  Wars.  Greek  Independence.  Crimean 
War.  The  Balkan  States.  Nihilism.  Results  of  Euro- 
pean Wars.    Nicholas  ii. 

Chapter  III. — An  Asiatic  Power.  Wars  and  Treaties  with 
Persia.  A  Way  to  the  Indian  Ocean.  In  the  Caucasus. 
Paramount  in  Persia. 

Chapter  IV. — Expansion  Towards  India.  Napoleon.  The 
Conquest  of  the  Khans.  In  Afghanistan.  The  "  Key 
of  the  Indies."  In  Touch  With  India.  Abyssinia. 
British  Over-Confidence. 

Chapter  V. — The  Opening  of  Siberia.  Value  of  Siberia. 
Chinese  Wars.  Settlements  on  the  Pacific.  Chinese 
Cessions.    Vladivostock.     Russian  Influence  at  Pekin. 

Chapter  VI. — The  China- Japan  War.  Interference  of  Russia. 
Conflict  With  Japanese  Interests.     Russia's  Gain. 

Chapter  VII. — Russian  Concessions.  Port  Arthur.  Railways. 
Loans.  Corea.  Germany.  Great  Britain.  The  United 
States. 

Chapter  VIII. — Fruits  of  Diplomacy.  Absolutism  of  Russian 
Government.  An  Enlightened  Despotism.  Russian  Colon- 
ists. Race  Characteristics.  Religion.  Population. 
Franco-Russian  Alliance.    From  the  Baltic  to  the  Pacific. 


V 


The 

Expansion   of  Russia 


THE  EXPANSION  OF  RUSSIA. 

The  Origin  of  the  Russian  State  and  Nation  —  The 
Tartar-Mongols  —  Principality  of  Moscow  —  The  Unity 
OF  Russia  —  Isolation  —  The  Aim  of   Russian  Diplomacy. 


E  fail  to  discover,  however  far 
back  we  go  towards  the  begin- 
nings of  the  Russian  State, 
any  indication  that  this  was 
ever  destined  to  beccme  a 
maritime  power.  In  the  ninth 
century,  the  Slavic  tribes  that 
were  to  form  the  first  political 
organization  designated  by  the  name  Russian, — the 
Slavo-Russian  tribes, — occupied  a  territory  securely  shut 
in  on  the  west,  by  the  Poles  and  the  Lithuanians  ;  on 
the  north,  by  the  Finnish  tribes,  the  Livonians,  the 
Tchudis,  and  the  Ingrians;  on  the  east,  Finnish  tribes 
again,  the  Vesi,  the  Merians,  the  Muromians,  and 
two  Turkish  tribes,  the  Meshtcheraks  and  the  Khazars, 
that  occupied  all  the  northern  coast  of  the  Bbck  Sea  ; 
allowing  but  a  single  one  of  the  Slavo-Russian  peoples 
to  hold  a  position  upon  its  shores.     Except  at  this  point, 

(0 


2  RUSSIA  OF  THE  IXth  CENTURY. 

these  Slavo-Russian  tribes  nowhere  had  access  to  the 
coast.  The  shores  of  the  White  Sea  and  the  Arctic 
Ocean  were  Finnish ;  those  of  the  Baltic,  Finnish  or 
Scandinavian  ;  those  of  the  Black  Sea  were  held  by  the 
Khazars,  the  Caucasian  tribes,  the  Byzantine  Empire, 
and  the  Bulgarians,  a  Finnish  tribe  that  had  imposed  its 
name  and  sovereignty  upon  a  certain  number  of  Slavic 
tribes. 

In  the  East  and  North,  the  Slavs  were  not  to  be  found 
even  in  those  regions  where  afterwards  rose  the  Russian 
capitals,  Moscow  and  St.  Petersburg.  Beyond  began 
those  immense  spaces  that  stretch  away  into  the  depths 
of  Central  Asia,  and  even  to  the  Pacific  Ocean,  spaces 
peopled  with  Finnish  and  Turkish  tribes,  and  other 
branches  of  the  Uralo-Altaic  family.  Then,  still  fur- 
ther east,  were  to  be  found  certain  peoples  of  the  yellow 
race. 

To  speak  now  only  of  the  Russia  of  Europe,  how  did 
the  Slavo-Russians,  who  in  the  ninth  century  held 
scarcely  a  fifth  part  of  their  present  territory,  succeed  in 
securing  possession  of  it  all  .-'  A  two-fold  change  came 
about  during  the  centuries.  On  the  one  hand,  the  Slavo- 
Russians,  very  venturesome  in  disposition,  following,  at 
first,  the  course  of  the  rivers  and  their  tributaries,  spread 
out  over  the  vast  plains  that  stretch  away  to  the  Ural 
Mountains  ;  founding  everywhere  cities,  villages,  and 
markets  right  in  the  midst  of  the  territory  of  the  aborigi- 
nal tribes.      On  the  other  hand,  they  absorbed  the  greater 


THE  WELDING  OF  THE  TRIBES.  3 

part  of  those  tribes,  and  imposed  upon  them  their  lan- 
guage, religion,  and  even  their  manners  and  customs.  A 
double  colonization,  therefore,  took  place,  a  colonization 
of  the  soil  and  a  colonization  of  the  native.  The  ancient 
Uralo- Altaic  tribes,  subjugated  or  absorbed  by  the  Rus- 
sians, have  disappeared  from  the  map  of  the  empire. 
There  persist  still  only  some  scattered  remnants  of  them, 
surrounded  by  men  of  Russian  race  and  speech,  and 
destined  soon  to  disappear.  These  aborigines  are  to  be 
found  in  fairly  compact  groups  only  in  those  places  where 
the  severity  of  the  climate,  the  barren  character  of  the 
soil,  the  thickness  of  the  forest,  and  the  desert  steppes 
check  Russian  civilization,  an  ethnographical  medley, 
moreover,  occupying  only  a  very  small  and  indifferently 
valuable  part  of  the  European  Russia  of  to-day.' 

Thus  the  primitive  tribes  of  the  Slavo-Russians  formed 
an  agglomeration  which  was  everywhere  well-nigh 
entirely  shut  off  from  any  sea.  This  had  a  character 
essentially  continental;  the  population  was  wholly  agri- 
cultural in  character,  and,  except  as  fleets  of  light  boats 
descended  the  Dnieper  in  the  tenth  century  to  harass 
Constantinople  and  to  commit  piracy  on  the  Byzantine 
shores  of  the  Black  Sea,  there  was  nothing  to  indicate 
that  it  would  one  day  come  forth  as  a  maritime  power. 

(i)  Thus  the  Suomi,  the  Karelians,  and  the  Laplanders  in  Finland  ; 
the  Zyrians  and  the  Permians,  in  the  northeast  ;  the  Tcheremisa, 
the  Mordva,  the  Votiaki,  the  Meshtcheraks,  and  the  Bashkirs  on 
the  river  Volga,  or  between  the  Volga  and  the  L^ral  Mountains  and 
river. 


4  THE  ORTHODOX  CHURCH. 

The  Russia  of  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries  was 
scarcely  European.  She  was  bound  to  Europe  only  by 
her  form  of  religion,  and  even  that,  borrowed  from  Byzan- 
tium, was  an  Oriental,  an  almost  Asiatic  form  of  Chris- 
tianity. When  there  came  about  in  the  eleventh  century 
the  rupture  between  the  Latin  and  Catholic  Church  of  the 
West,  and  the  Greek  and  Orthodox  Church  of  the  East, 
a  still  higher  barrier  was  raised  between  the  two  parts  of 
Europe.  To  the  Western  Christians,  the  Greeks  and 
the  peoples  that  they  had  evangelized,  the  Bulgarians, 
the  Servians,  the  Moldavo-Wallachians,  and  the  Rus- 
sians, were  only  schismatics.  Now,  while  the  Catholic 
peoples  of  the  West,  thanks  to  more  favorable  historical 
circumstances,  began  to  take  shape  as  powerful  nations 
in  which  an  already  well-advanced  civilization  went  on 
developing,  the  schismatic  peoples  of  Eastern  Europe, 
assailed  by  successive  invasions  from  Asia,  and  after 
having  long  served  as  a  living  bulwark  against  barbarism 
for  ungrateful  Europe,  were  checked  in  their  historic 
evolution,  and  fell  one  after  the  other  into  servitude  to 
pagan  Mongols  or  Mohammedan  Turks. 

The  country  where  the  Slavo-Russians  first  established 
themselves  was  only  a  prolongation  of  the  great  plains 
which,  scarcely  broken  by  the  Ural  Mountains,  extend 
to  Behring's  Sea,  Okhotsk  Sea,  and  the  Sea  of  Japan. 
Geographically,  topographically,  this  primitive  Russia 
was  already  Asiatic.  Just  as  the  winds  from  Asia  swept 
unhindered  all  this  immense  plain,  so  could  the  migration 


THE  TARTAR-MONGOLS.  5 

of  peoples  and  invading  expeditions,  at  times  originat- 
ing near  the  Great  Wall  of  China,  pour  unchecked  over 
the  Russian  plains  as  far  as  the  Carpathian  Mountains 
and  the  Vistula. 

One  of  those  revolutions,  so  frequent  among  the 
nomadic  tribes  of  Asia,  brought  together  from  11 54  to 
1227  under  the  blue  banner  of  Temuchin,  called  Jenghis 
Khan,  numerous  tribes  of  shepherds  and  mounted 
nomads.  They  adopted  as  their  collective  name  that 
of  the  Tartar-Mongols.  At  their  head  "  the  Inflexible 
Emperor,"  "  the  Son  of  Heaven,"  conquered  Manchuria, 
the  kingdom  of  Tangut,  North  China,  Turkestan,  and 
Great  Bokhara,  and  founded  an  empire  which  extended 
from  the  Pacific  to  the  Ural  Mountains.  Under  the 
successors  of  Jenghis  Khan,  these  mounted  hordes,  mad- 
dened by  the  fury  of  war  and  conquest,  crossed  into 
Europe,  fell  upon  Russia,  then  divided  into  numerous 
principalities,  carried  the  capital  cities  by  assault,  anni- 
hilated, one  after  the  other,  the  armies  of  foot  and  horse 
sent  against  them,  and  in  1240  converted  all  Russia  into 
a  mere  province  of  the  Mongol  Empire.  The  Russian 
princes  and  the  chieftains  of  the  Finnish  tribes  became 
vassals  of  the  Great  Khan,'  who  held  his  court  on  the 
banks  of  the  Onon,   an   affluent    of   the   Amur,  or  at 


(1)  Consult  Howorth,  History  of  the  Mongols,  London,  1876. 
Wolff,  Geschichte  der  Mongolen,  Breslau,  1872.  Leon  Cahun, 
Introduction  a  V histoire  de  V Asie,  Paris,  1896. 


6  A  PROVINCE  OF  THE  MONGOL  EMPIRE. 

Karakorum  on  the  Orkhon,  a  stream  emptying  into  Lake 
Baikal.  They  were  also  more  directly  the  vassals  of  one 
of  his  vassals,  the  Khan  of  the  Golden  Horde,  who  was 
stationed  at  Sarai  on  the  lower  Volga. 

At  this  period  the  Tartar-Mongols,  among  whom 
Mohammedanism  was  disseminated  until  about  1272, 
were  still  Buddhists,  Shamanists,  or  fetich  worshipers  ;  at 
heart  very  indifferent  in  matters  of  religion,  and  strangers 
to  any  thought  of  propagandism  or  of  intolerance. 
They,  therefore,  left  the  Russians  in  undisturbed  posses- 
sion of  their  religion,  their  laws,  and  their  own  princely 
dynasties.  They  merely  exacted  tribute,  and,  in  certain 
contingencies,  military  service ;  and  every  new  Russian 
prince  must  go  to  receive  his  investiture  either  at  Sarai, 
or  even  by  a  journey  that  would  occupy  years,  at  the  court 
of  the  Great  Khan.  There  they  were  compelled  to 
prostrate  themselves  at  the  foot  of  his  throne,  to  defend 
themselves  against  the  accusations  of  enemies,  or  of  their 
Russian  rivals  ;  and  the  Khan  disposed  of  their  heads  as 
of  their  crowns.  Many  Russian  princes  were  executed 
before  his  eyes.  Some  among  these,  the  Russian  Church 
honors  as  martyrs. 

Among  the  Russian  princes  who  went  there  to  pros- 
trate themselves  before  the  Horde  were  those  who  had 
founded  round  about  a  little  market-town,  the  name  of 
which  is  met  with  for  the  first  time  in  1147,3  new 
principality,  that  of  Moscow,  one  of  the  most  insignifi- 
cant of  the  Russian  states  of  that  period.      It  was  estab- 


MOSCOW— GRAND  PRINCE  DMITRI.  7 

lished  in  the  midst  of  a  Finnish  country,  among  the 
Muromians.  It  formed,  therefore,  a  colony  of  primitive 
Russia.  The  princes  of  Moscow  knew  how  to  turn  to 
their  own  advantage  the  Mongol  yoke  that  weighed  on 
all  Russia.  They  were  more  adroit  than  the  others  in 
flattering  the  common  master  and  the  agents  that  repre- 
sented him  in  Russia.  One  of  them,  George  (1303— 
1325),  even  married  a  Tartar  princess.  In  their  strug- 
gles against  other  Russian  princes,  they  always  carried 
the  controversy  to  the  court  of  the  Khan,  who  almost 
always  decided  in  their  favor,  and  sent  them  away 
with  the  heads  of  their  rivals.  They  secured  from  the 
Khan  the  privilege  of  collecting  the  tribute,  not  only 
from  their  own  subjects,  but  from  the  other  princes  of 
Russia.  This  function  as  tribute  collector  for  the  Khan 
raised  them  above  all  their  equals ;  and  the  more  humble 
vassals  of  the  barbarians  they  showed  themselves  to  be, 
the  better  did  they  establish  their  suzerainty  over  the 
other  Christian  states.  They  succeeded  thus  in  building 
up  a  powerful  state,  which  was  called  the  "  Great 
Principality  "  of  Moscow.  When  they  felt  themselves 
to  be  strong  enough,  and  perceived  that  the  Mongol 
Empire  had  grown  sufficiently  weak  through  internal 
dissension  and  divisions  to  warrant  the  attempt,  they 
turned  against  the  barbarians  the  power  that  they  owed 
to  them.  In  1380,  the  Grand  Prince  DmiVri,  having 
refused  payment  of  tribute,  defeated  Mamai,  the  Khan 
of  the  Golden  Horde,  at  Kulikovo  on  the  Don.    But  the 


IVAN  THE  GREAT. 


Mongols  were  not  yet  as  weak  as  Dmitri  Donskoi'  (hero 
of  the  Don)  had  thought.  Tamerlane,  or  Timur-Leng, 
had  just  conquered  Turkestan,  Persia,  Asia  Minor,  and 
North  Hindustan.  One  of  his  lieutenants,  Tokhtamysh, 
having  vainly  summoned  the  Grand  Prince  Dmitri  to 
appear  before  him,  marched  against  Moscow,  captured 
the  city  and  its  Kremlin,  sacked  the  other  cities  of  the 
principality,  and  everywhere  reestablished  Asiatic 
supremacy.  Nevertheless,  the  Mongol  yoke  was  not  to 
survive  long  the  heroic  effort  made  at  Kulikovo.  The 
great  barbarian  empires  founded  by  Asiatic  conquerors 
quickly  fall  to  pieces.  This  historical  law  was  verified 
in  the  Empire  of  Tamerlane,  as  in  that  of  Jenghis  Khan. 
Towards  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century,  the  Mongol 
Empire  of  Asia  was  divided  into  the  Mongol  Empire  of 
China,  the  Mongol  Empire  of  India,  the  Mongol  King- 
dom of  Persia,  and  a  large  number  of  khanates  in  Turk- 
estan and  Siberia;  and  all  those  states  were  scarcely 
any  longer  Mongol  save  m  name.  In  Russia  itself,  the 
Golden  Horde  was  broken  up.  From  its  debris  were 
formed  the  czarate  of  Kazan  on  the  middle  Volga,  the 
khanate,  or  czarate,  of  Sarai,  or  Astrakhan,  on  the  lower 
Volga,  the  horde  of  the  Nogai's,  and  the  khanate  of  the 
Crimea.  In  1476,  Akhmed,  the  Khan  of  Sarai,  sent  a 
demand  for  tribute  to  the  Grand  Prince  of  Moscow, 
Ivan  the  Great.  Ivan  put  the  ambassadors  to  death. 
Four  years  later,  the  Khan  Akhmed  marched  upon  Mos- 
cow with  a  large  army.     Near  the  rivers  Oka  and  Ugra 


END  OF  THE  MONGOL  RULE.  9 

he  met  the  army  of  Ivan  the  Great ;  but  neither  of  the 
adversaries  dared  force  the  passage  of  the  two  rivers. 
They  remained  there  several  days  exchanging  insults  and 
darts  from  the  opposite  shores.  Then  a  panic  simultane- 
ously arose  in  both  armies ;  the  one  fleeing  in  the 
direction  of  Moscow,  the  other  in  the  direction  of  Sarai. 
It  was  in  this  bloodless,  inglorious  way  that  the  Mongol 
power  in  Russia  came  to  an  end. 

The  Mongol  yoke  had  continued  two  hundred  and 
fifty-six  years  (i 224-1480).  It  left  in  Russia  traces 
that  were  for  a  long  time  ineffaceable.  Before  the  Tartar 
conquest,  the  power  of  a  Russian  prince  was  founded 
upon  European  origins.  It  recalled  the  patriarchal 
authority  of  the  old-time  chieftains  of  the  Slavo-Russian 
tribes  ;  the  martial  authority  of  the  heads  of  the  Scandi- 
navian or  Variagian  clans,  like  Rurik  and  other  Variagian 
chiefs,  called  into  Russia,  it  is  said,  by  the  Slavs  ;  and 
the  authority,  at  once  civil  and  religious,  of  the  Byzan- 
tine-Roman emperors,  whom  the  successors  of  Rurik, 
like  all  the  barbarian  chieftains  of  Eastern  Europe,  liked 
to  take  as  models.  After  the  Tartar  conquest,  on  the 
contrary,  the  Russian  princes,  and  especially  the  Grand 
Princes  of  Moscow,  selected  as  prototypes  of  their  own 
authority  the  Khans  and  Great  Khans  with  their  auto- 
cratic power, — coarse,  irresponsible,  Asiatic.  From  that 
time  forward,  they  treated  their  vassals  as  they  themselves 
had  been  treated  by  the  Khans.  Between  the  Grand 
Prince  and  his  vassals,  and   between  these  and  the  peas- 


10  NATIVE  RULERS— COSTUME. 

ants,  the  relations  were  those  of  brutal  masters  and 
tembling  slaves.  The  sovereign  of  Moscow  did  not  differ 
from  a  Mongol  Khan,  from  a  Persian  Shah,  or  from 
an  Osmanli  Sultan,  save  as  he  professed  the  orthodox 
religion.  He  was  a  sort  of  a  Christian  Grand  Turk. 
When  the  title  of  Grand  Prince  seemed  to  him  unworthy 
of  his  increased  power,  the  title  that  his  ambition  chose 
was  none  of  those  that  the  Christian  rulers  of  the  West 
then  bore ;  it  was  the  one  which  the  Khans  of  Siberia, 
of  Kazan,  or  of  Astrakhan  had  arrogated ;  it  was  the 
title  of  Czar,  which,  of  course,  has  not  any  etymological 
connection  with  that  of  Caesar,  a  fiction  invented  very 
much  later.  Such  was  the  title  that  the  heir  of  the 
Grand  Princes  of  Moscow,  Ivan  the  Terrible,  solemnly 
took  in  1547.  Many  other  facts  attest  the  predomi- 
nance of  Asiatic  influences  over  the  Russia  of  the  six- 
teenth century.  The  costumes  of  the  Czar  of  Moscow 
and  of  the  other  great  lords,  the  princes  and  boyars,  were 
Asiatic  ;  Asiatic  was  the  servile  etiquette  of  the  court ; 
touching  with  the  brow  the  foot  of  the  throne,  and  the 
humble  formulas  in  which  the  highest  personages  declared 
themselves  to  be  slaves;  Asiatic  was  the  seclusion  of  the 
women  in  the  terem^  which  was  a  Russian  harem  ;'  Asiatic 
was  the   equipment  of  the  royal  cavalry  with  their  high 

(1)  However,  it  is  proper  to  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  the 
servile  character  of  the  court  etiquette  may  also  have  been  borrowed 
from  Byzantium,  and  that  the  Russian  terem  may  have  had  its 
original  in  the  gynascium  of  the  Greeks. 


THE  UNITY  OF  RUSSIA.  ii 

saddles  and  short  stirrups ;  their  boots  with  the  toe  in 
the  form  of  an  upturned  crescent ;  their  armor  remind- 
ing one  of  the .  Chinese  and  Japanese  ;  their  curved 
swords,  their  bows  and  quivers,  and  their  head-dress, 
which  resembled  a  turban  surmounted  by  an  aigrette. 
All  this  Oriental  apparel  was  to  continue  in  vogue  until 
the  time  when  Peter  the  Great,  with  the  violent  meas- 
ures of  an  Asiatic  despot,  forcibly  introduced  into  Russia 
the  short  clothing  of  the  West, — "  German  dress,"  that 
is,  European.  With  this  change  in  costume,  he  also 
brought  in  the  fashion  of  shaving  the  face  ;  the  holding 
of  social  gatherings,  which  the  recluses  of  the  terem  were 
compelled  to  attend ;  the  etiquette  of  the  Christian 
courts ;  the  formulary  of  the  German  bureaucracy,  and 
the  uniforms,  equipments,  and  tactics  of  the  armies  of 
the  West. 

While  Russia  was  still  groaning  under  the  Mongol 
yoke,  the  Grand  Princes  of  Moscow,  utilizing  their  ser- 
vitude as  an  instrument  of  power,  caused  the  other 
princes  to  bow  before  the  terror  of  the  Mongol,  and 
brought  about  "the  consolidation  of  the  Russian  territory," 
that  is  to  say,  they  founded  the  unity  of  Russia.  When 
the  family  line  of  the  Grand  Princes  and  Czars  of  Mos- 
cow died  out  in  1598,  and  when  there  began  for  Russia 
"those  troublous  times  {smoutnote  Vremia\"  which  the 
accession  of  the  Romanofs  brought  to  an  end  in  16 13, 
the  czarate  of  Moscow  was  already  a  very  powerful 
state. 


12  CONQUESTS. 

In  the  North  especially,  by  the  annexation  of  the  ter- 
ritories of  the  ancient  republics  of  Novgorod  and  Pskof, 
the  Muscovite  supremacy  was  extended  to  the  White 
Sea  and  the  Arctic  Ocean.  On  the  west,  in  a  series  of 
wars  against  the  Lithuanians  and  the  Poles  to  "recover" 
from  them  Russian  territory  which  they  had  formerly 
conquered,  the  Moscow  czarate  had  carried  its  power 
beyond  Pskof  and  Lake  Peipus,  and  had  reached  the 
Dnieper  at  Kiev  and  Smolensk.  In  the  South,  it  had 
reached  neither  the  Black  Sea  nor  the  Sea  of  Azov,  from 
which  it  was  separated  by  the  Ukraine  that  still  belonged 
to  the  Poles,  by  a  republic  of  adventurers  and  pirates 
called  the  Zaporovians,  by  the  khanate  of  the  Crimean 
Tartars,  by  the  camping  grounds  of  the  Nogaian  Tar- 
tars, and,  finally,  by  the  maritime  power  of  the  Ottomans 
on  the  Euxine.  Eastward,  Russian  conquest  and  col- 
onization had  made  great  advances.  The  uniting  of  the 
old  territories  of  Novgorod,  and  the  annexation  of  those 
of  the  republic  of  Viatka,  brought  the  Muscovite  domi- 
nation to  the  Ural  Mountains.  The  conquest  of  the 
czarate  of  Kazan  by  Ivan  the  Terrible,  in  1552,  gave 
him  all  the  region  of  the  middle  Volga,  and  the  conquest 
of  the  czarate  of  Astrakhan,  two  years  later,  placed  in 
his  power  all  the  lower  Volga  country,  with  a  part  of  the 
coast  of  the  Caspian  Sea.  Finally,  the  conquest  of  the 
khanate  of  Sibir,  between  the  years  1579-1584,  by  the 
Cossack  Irmak,  carried  the  Russian  eagles  beyond  the 
Urals,  and  opened  before  them  the  immensities  of  Siberia. 


IVAN  THE  TERRIBLE.  13 

But  the  more  extensive  the  Muscovite  Empire  became, 
the  more  it  suffered  from  not  having  access  to  any  sea 
which  was  all  the  year  free  from  ice,  or  which  would 
afford  an  outlet  to  the  ocean.  The  harbors  of  the  White 
Sea  were  closed  with  ice  eight  months  of  the  year ;  the 
Caspian  Sea  is  only  a  great  lake  without  an  outlet. 
To  reach  the  Baltic  Sea,  it  would  be  necessary  to  battle 
against  the  Germans,  the  Poles,  and  the  Swedes,  the  mas- 
ters of  all  its  shores.  To  gain  access  to  the  Black  Sea, 
there  were,  again,  the  Poles  to  be  fought,  as  well  as  the 
Tartars,  the  Zaporovians,  and  the  Grand  Turk.  Now, 
the  European  neighbors  of  Russia  were  beginning  to  fear 
this  great  barbarian  empire.  They  were  convinced  that 
it  would  become  truly  a  terror  to  them  the  day  on  which, 
by  obtaining  regular  communication  with  the  West,  it 
could  thereby  learn  somethmg  of  their  civilization,  their 
industries,  and,  above  all,  their  military  art.  They  under- 
stood that  the  backward  condition  of  its  civilization  was 
the  only  safeguard  against  its  ambitions.  They,  there- 
fore, closed  against  it  their  eastern  frontiers,  and  barred 
it  out  of  the  Baltic.  At  the  time  when  Ivan  the  Ter- 
rible, profiting  by  the  decadence  into  which  the  Sword- 
Bearers,  the  religious  military  order  of  the  Livonians,  had 
fallen,  took  their  lands  away  from  them,  and  raised  his 
flag  at  their  port  of  Narva,  Poles,  Germans,  and  Swedes 
united  against  him ;  they  incited  fresh  invasions  of  the 
Crimean  Tartars,  conspiracies  and  rebellion  among  his 
nobility ;  and,  after  a  bitter  struggle  of  twenty-four  years. 


14  ISOLATION  OF  RUSSIA. 

compelled  him  to  abandon  his  conquest  in  1582.  So 
long  as  Narva  was  in  the  hands  of  the  Czar,  Sigismund, 
King  of  Poland,  did  not  have  a  moment's  peace.  When 
English  merchants  began  to  resort  there,  he  wrote  threat- 
ening letters  to  Oueen  Elizabeth,  summoning  her  to  for- 
bid that  traffic.  "  Our  fleet  will  seize  all  those  who  con- 
tinue to  sail  thither ;  your  merchants  will  be  in  danger  of 
losingtheir  liberty,  their  wives  and  children,and  their  lives." 
And  this  confession  escaped  him  :  "  We  see  by  this  new 
traffic  the  Muscovite,  who  is  not  only  our  enemy  to-day, 
but  the  hereditary  enemy  of  all  free  nations,  furnishing 
himself  thoroughly,  not  only  with  our  guns  and  muni- 
tions of  war,  but,  above  all,  with  skilled  workmen,  who 
continue  to  prepare  equipments  of  war  for  him,  such  as 
have  been  hitherto  unknov/n  to  his  barbaric  people.  *  *  * 
It  would  seem  that  we  have  thus  far  conquered  him 
because  he  is  ignorant  of  the  art  of  war  and  the  finesse  of 
diplomacy.  Now,  if  this  commerce  continues,  what  will 
there  soon  be  left  for  him  to  learn  ?  " 

Thus,  it  was  not  merely  unpropitious  nature  that  kept 
Russia  in  a  condition  of  blockade ;  but  the  jealousy  of 
her  neighbors  mounted  a  most  rigorous  guard  around 
these  "barbarians"  of  the  North.  The  empire  of 
Moscow  remained  condemned,  like  the  agglomeration  of 
Slavic  tribes  of  the  ninth  and  tenth  centuries  from  which 
it  had  sprung,  to  a  purely  continental  life.  It  was  shut 
up  to  its  vast  northern  plams  like  the  Swiss  to  his  moun- 
tains, and  seemed  to  have  as  little  chance  of  ever  becom- 
ing a  maritime  power. 


THE  AIM  OF  RUSSIA.  15. 

Hitherto,  the  Muscovite  Empire  with  its  military 
organization  wholly  Asiatic,  with  its  noble-born  knights 
and  free  peasants,  with  its  infantry  militia,  the  sireltsy^ 
with  its  old-fashioned  artillery,  with  its  irregular  troops 
of  Cossacks,  Tartars,  and  Calmucks,  had  been  able  to 
withstand  victoriously  Asiatic  forces  ;  but  it  could  not 
maintain  a  struggle  against  the  regular  troops  and  im- 
proved weapons  of  the  western  nations.  In  order  to 
make  her  mark  in  Europe,  it  was  necessary  for  Russia  to 
become  European ;  but  she  could  not  become  European 
if  Europe  persisted  in  holding  her  in  a  condition  of 
blockade.  It  was  a  "  vicious  circle ";  and  it  was 
reserved  for  the  genius  of  Peter  the  Great  to  succeed  in 
breaking  that  circle. 

Henceforth,  we  see  Russian  diplomacy,  with  tireless 
patience,  with  a  shrewdness  equal  to  its  persistency, 
endeavoring  simultaneously  in  all  directions  to  pierce  the 
blockade.  She  strives  to  secure  access  to  the  Baltic  Sea  ; 
and  we  shall  have  the  Northern  War  of  Peter  the  Great, 
the  partition  of  Poland  under  Catherine  II.,  the  P^inland 
question  under  the  Czarina  Elizabeth,  and  under  Alex- 
ander I.  She  strives  to  secure  access  to  the  Black  Sea ; 
and  we  shall  have  the  Eastern  Question  in  all  its  forms, 
from  the  first  efforts  of  Peter  the  Great  down  to  the  war 
of  1877-78. of  Alexander  II.  She  strives  to  make  her- 
self mistress  of  the  Caspian  Sea,  and  the  attempt  made 
by  Peter  the  Great  will  reach  an  end  only  under  Alex- 
ander III.     She  strives  to   secure  access  to  the  Indian 


i6  THE  AIM  OF  RUSSIA. 

Ocean,  and  we  shall  have  the  wars  and  treaties  with 
Persia,  Afghanistan,  and  England.  She  strives  to  secure 
access  to  the  Okhotsk  Sea,  the  Sea  of  Japan,  and  the 
Pacific  Ocean,  and  we  shall  witness  the  work  of  Siberian 
colonization  and  all  the  phases  of  the  Far  Eastern  Ques- 
tion. The  matter  of  securing  new  territory  concerns 
her  much  less.  It  has  been  the  supreme  end  of  her 
efforts,  at  times  continued  for  centuries,  to  reach  a  sea, 
— a  sea  free  from  ice,  a  sea  opening  into  the  ocean. 


THE  EXPANSION    OF    RUSSIA    IN    EUROPE. 

Peter  the  Great — Poland — The  Eastern  Question — Latin 
AND  Greek  Churches — Catherine  the  Great — Turkish 
Wars — Greek  Independence — Crimean  War — The  Balkan 
States — Nihilism — Results  of  European  Wars — Nicholas  ii. 


E  know  with  what  energy  and 
alternation  of  success  and  fail- 
ure Peter  the  Great  struggled 
against  the  Swedish  masters  of 
the  eastern  and  southern  shores 
of  the  Baltic.  We  are  amazed 
when  we  reflect  that  a  war, 
lasting  more  than  twenty-one 
years ;  a  war  that  convulsed  all  Europe ;  that  brought 
the  Swedes  into  the  heart  of  Russia  and  the  Russians 
into  the  centre  of  Germany ;  that  brought  about  the 
creation  of  a  Russian  army  and  navy  under  the  fire  of  the 
enemy,  and  that  numbered  a  score  of  battles  on  land  and 
sea, — should  have  ended  in  results  apparently  so  meagre 
as  were  those  gained  by  Russia  in  1721  at  the  Treaty  of 
Nystad ;  namely,  the  acquisition  of  four  small  provinces, 
Livonia,  Esthonia,  Ingria,  and  Karelia.     But  these  prov- 

(17) 


i8  FINLAND— POLAND. 

inces  gave  him  on  the  Baltic  the  ports  of  Riga,  Revel, 
and  Narva  ;  they  gave  him  also  the  mouths  of  tw^o  riv- 
ers, the  broad  Neva  and  the  Diina,  or  Dvina  (not  to  be 
confounded  with  the  other  Dvina  that  empties  into  the 
White  Sea).  It  was  on  the  islets  of  the  Neva  that  Peter 
the  Great  had  founded  in  1703,  on  lands  still  disputed 
by  the  Swedes  and  by  the  floods,  the  capital  of  European  ' 
Russia,  St.  Petersburg,  protected  on  the  west  by  the 
maritime  fortress  of  Kronstadt.  Yes,  "the  Giant 
Czar  "  considered  himself  amply  repaid  for  his  efforts  of 
twenty-one  years  by  the  fact  that  for  his  vast  continental 
empire,  still  wrapped  in  Asiatic  darkness,  he  had  been 
able  "to  open  one  window  on  Europe." 

This  window  was  still  a  very  narrow  one.  It  was 
somewhat  enlarged  by  Elizabeth,  when,  after  a  war  fool- 
ishly undertaken  by  Sweden,  she  made  that  country,  in 
the  Treaty  of  Abo,  1743,  surrender  some  districts  in 
Finland.  Later,  Alexander  I.,  during  his  short-lived 
alliance  with  Napoleon,  conquered  from  his  recent  ally, 
Gustavus  III.,  all  of  Finland  (Treaty  of  Fredericksham, 
1809).  Russia  had  now  no  longer  anything  to  seek  in 
that  direction. 

Westward,  between  Russia,  already  powerful  and 
always  war-like,  and  Prussia,  now  grown  great  in  glory 
and  strength,  lay  an  extremely  weak  state  made  up  of 
the  kingdom  of  Poland,  the  grand  duchy  of  Lithuania  and 
some  old-time  Russian  districts.  The  first  three  par- 
titions  of  this   state   (1772,    1793,    1795)5  carried    the 


PARTITION  OF  POLAND.  19 

Russian  frontier  to  the  Niemen,  the  Warthe,  and  the 
Dniester.  Catherine  II.  completed  these  conquests  by  the 
annexation  of  Courland,  which  had  been  a  vassal  depen- 
dency of  the  fallen  kingdom.  It  is  to  be  noted,  how- 
ever, that  in  what  is  called  "  the  partition  of  Poland," 
Catherine  II.  did  not  acquire  any  Polish,  but  merely 
Lithuanian  territory  that  formerly  had  been  Russian.  If 
Napoleon  I.  had  not  attempted  to  reestablish  on  the  Rus- 
sian frontier  a  Polish  kingdom  under  the  name  of  "  the 
grand  duchy  of  Warsaw,"  perhaps  Russia  would  not 
have  been  ambitious  to  secure  possession  of  any  former 
Polish  territory.  After  the  fall  of  Napoleon,  the  Czar 
Alexander  I.  was  obliged  to  appropriate  a  considerable 
part  of  this  under  the  name  of  "  the  kingdom  of  Poland," 
were  it  for  no  other  reason  than  to  prevent  an  increase 
of  territory  upon  the  part  of  the  two  German  powers. 
Henceforth  the  western  frontier  of  Russia  was  fixed.  It 
has  not  changed  since  181 5,  and,  to  admit  the  possibility 
of  a  change  in  the  future,  it  would  be  necessary  to  admit 
the  possibility  of  a  total  overturning  of  the  European 
balance  of  power. 

Though  Russian  expansion  towards  the  north  was 
stopped  by  the  icy  solitudes  of  Lapland,  westward  by  the 
frontiers  of  states  as  firmly  established  as  the  German 
and  Austro-Hungarian  Empires,  yet  for  a  long  time  a 
broad  way  remained  open  to  Russia  in  the  direction  of 
the  south.  The  decadence  of  the  Ottoman  Empire 
seemed  to  offer  her  the  same  favorable  opportunities  as 


20  THE  DREAM  OF  CONSTANTINOPLE. 

did  the  decline  of  the  Polish-Lithuanian  Empire.  In 
this  direction,  acquisition  of  territory  promised  to  be 
infinitely  more  precious.  The  Russians  could  dream  of 
the  Black  Sea,  the  Propontis,  and  the  JEgean  Sea  becom- 
ing Russian  lakes ;  of  Christian  peoples  of  the  same 
religion  (Roumanians  and  Greeks), — and  of  some  of  the 
same  religion  and  race  (Bulgarians,  Servians,  Croatians, 
Bosnians,  Herzegovinians,  and  Montenegrians), — wel- 
coming the  armies  of  a  Liberator  Czar,  and  joyfully 
accepting  the  domination  of  Russia  in  exchange  for  that 
of  the  Ottoman  ;  and,  finally,  they  could  dream  of  Con- 
stantinople, the  capital  of  the  Eastern  Roman  Empire, 
freed  from  the  yoke  of  the  infidel,  and  of  the  cross  taking 
the  place  of  the  crescent  on  the  dome  of  Saint  Sophia. 
Nevertheless,  it  was,  perhaps,  in  the  direction  of  the 
south  that  Russia,  in  her  schemes  for  expansion,  after 
some  brilliant  successes,  found  herself  the  most  com- 
pletely deceived. 

For  a  long  time  the  sovereigns  that  sat  upon  Russia's 
throne  at  Moscow,  and  then  at  St.  Petersburg,  were 
infatuated  with  this  Oriental  mirage.  The  Russian 
Orthodox  Church  urged  them  on  in  this  course  through 
sympathy  with  the  Orthodox  Christians  who  were  in 
subjection  to  the  infidel.  Even  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  at  a  certain  time  encouraged  them  in  the  hope 
that  the  sword  of  the  Czar  might  accomplish  both  the 
deliverance  of  the  Christians  and  the  union  of  the  two 
churches^  that  is   to  sav,  the  subordination  of  the  Greek 


THE  LATIN  AND  GREEK  CHURCHES.  21 

Church  to  the  Roman.  It  was  Pope  Paul  III.,  who,  at 
the  advice  of  the  Greek  cardinal,  Bessarion,  offered  to 
the  Grand  Prince  of  Moscow,  Ivan  the  Great,  the  hand 
of  his  ward,  Sophia  Palaeologus,  the  niece  of  the  last 
Christian  emperor  of  Constantinople.  It  was  at  Rome 
that  the  marriage  took  place,  and  it  was  the  Pope  who 
gave  a  dowry  to  the  heiress  of  the  Caesars  of  the  East.^ 
It  is  from  the  time  of  this  marriage  that  the  double-headed 
eagle  of  the  Palaeologus  took  its  place  on  the  escutcheons 
and  standards  of  the  Russian  sovereigns.  Paul  III.  was  de- 
ceived in  both  his  hopes  ;  for  the  union  of  the  two  churches 
was  never  accepted  at  Moscow,  and  many  years  passed 
before  a  Russian  army  was  able  to  advance  a  step  southward. 
The  second  of  the  Romanofs,  Alexis,  father  of  Peter  the 
Great,  set  the  first  landmark  southward  in  the  Treaty  of 
Andrussovo  with  Poland,  in  1667,  by  acquiring  a  part 
of  the  Ukraine,  extending  as  far  as  the  upper  course  of 
the  Dnieper.  Vast  spaces  still  separated  the  Russian  and 
the  Ottoman  Empires.  Nevertheless,  in  the  coolest  and 
shrewdest  minds  brooded  the  idea  of  a  holy  war  against 
the  infidel.  Peter  the  Great,  still  young  and  journeying 
in  Western  Europe,  learning  its  arts  and  himself  wield- 
ing the  carpenter's  axe  at  Saardam,  wrote,  in  1697,  ^° 
Adrian,  the  Patriarch  of  Moscow  :  "  We  are  laboring  in 
order  thoroughly  to  conquer  the  art  of  the  sea,  so  that 

(i)  Le  R.  P.  Prerling,  La  Russie  et  V orient — mariage  (Vun  tsar 
au  Vatican,  Paris,  1891  ;  La  Russie  et  le  saint-siege,  2  vols.  Paris, 
1896— '97. 


22  DEFEAT  BY  THE  TURKS. 

having  completely  learned  it,  on  our  return  to  Russia,  we 
may  be  victorious  over  the  enemies  of  Christ,  and  by  His 
grace  be  the  liberator  of  the  dovi^n-trodden  Christians. 
This  is  what  I  shall  never  cease  to  desire  until  my  latest 
breath." 

Upon  his  return  to  Russia,  however,  his  struggle  with 
Sweden  occupied  all  his  attention.  It  was  only  in  171 1, 
when  his  enemy,  Charles  XII.,  a  refugee  in  the  domains 
of  the  Grand  Turk,  earnestly  sought  to  have  the  latter 
take  up  arms  against  Russia,  that  Peter  the  Great  allowed 
himself  to  be  tempted  by  the  appeal  which  the  hospodars 
of  Moldavia  and  Wallachia,  Montenegrian  envoys,  and 
Greek  agents  addressed  to  him  in  the  name  of  Christians 
who  were  oppressed  and  ready  to  rise  in  revolt.  He 
found  immense  spaces  to  be  traversed ;  and  crossed  the 
Pruth  with  only  thirty-eight  thousand  starving  and  har- 
assed soldiers.  He  discovered  that  all  the  promises  of 
the  Levantines  were  unwarranted  ;  he  met  neither  allies 
nor  help ;  and  beset  by  two  hundred  thousand  Turks,  or 
Tartars,  he  had  to  consider  himself  fortunate  to  get  back 
again  across  the  rivers,  after  having  signed  the  Treaty  of 
Falksen,  or  of  the  Pruth,  which  restored  to  the  Ottomans 
his  first  conquest,  the  city  of  Azov. 

The  second  southward  step  of  the  Russians  was  the 
conquest  of  a  bit  of  territory  that  was  peopled  with  Ser- 
vian colonists,  and  that  was  called  New  Servia.  This 
acquisition  was  won  by  the  Treaty  of  Belgrade  in  i  739  ; 
but  it  had  cost  the  Empress  Anna  Ivanovna  three  years 


CATHERINE  II.  23 

of  war  and  useless  victories,  and  nearly  one  hundred 
thousand  men. 

The  third  was  a  gigantic  step.  After  the  first  war 
against  the  Turks,  Catherine  II.  found  herself  checked 
by  the  intervention  of  Prussia  and  Austria,  who  com- 
pelled her  to  renounce  nearly  all  her  eastern  conquests, 
and  to  accept  a  compensation  in  Poland.  Nevertheless, 
by  the  Treaty  of  Kairnaji,  in  1774,  she  had  ceded  to  her 
Azov  on  the  Don,  and  Kinburn  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Dnieper.  She  forced  the  Sultan  to  recognize  the  inde- 
pendence of  the  Tartars  of  the  Bug,  of  the  Crimea,  and 
of  the  Kuban.  This  was  to  prepare  for  their  annexation 
to  Russia,  which  was  successfully  accomplished  and  sanc- 
tioned by  the  Constantinople  Compact  of  1784.  All 
the  north  shore  of  the  Black  Sea  and  of  the  Dniester,  as 
far  as  the  Kuban  River,  now  became  Russian.  The  last 
Mohammedan  states  of  Russia  were  converted  into 
provinces  of  the  empire,  and  the  last  vestige  of  "  the 
Tartar  yoke"   was  effaced  from  Russian  soil. 

At  once  in  the  Tauric  peninsula  and  at  the  mouths  of 
the  rivers  arose  formidable  fortresses,  Kherson,  Kinburn, 
and,  on  a  bay  of  the  Crimea,  Sevastopol  was  made  ready 
to  control  the  Black  Sea.  An  entire  Russian  fleet  was 
built  up,  which  could  in  two  days  cast  anchor  before  the 
walls  of  the  Seraglio.  The  conquest  of  the  Turkish 
Empire,  impossible  to  Peter  the  Great,  seemedito  become 
easy  for  Catherine  the  Great.  In  the  triumphant  journey 
that  she  next  accomplished  through  the  conquered  pro- 


24  SECOND  TURKISH  WAR. 

vinces,  her  route  was  crowded  with  triumphal  arches, 
bearing  this  inscription  :  "  The  way  to  Byzantium." 
She  herself  provoked  the  second  Turkish  war  (1787- 
1792).  The  Russian  armies,  everywhere  victorious, 
advanced  to  the  Danube.  The  janissaries  and  spahis  of 
the  Sultan  could  not  stop  them  in  their  course.  But 
again  did  European  diplomacy  intervene.  Catherine  II. 
had  to  give  up  the  Roumanian  hospodarates^  which  had 
been  entirely  subdued,  and  be  satisfied  with  Otchakov, 
and  a  strip  of  territory  between  the  Bug  and  the  Dniester, 
and  with  guarantees  more  explicit  than  those  of  1774 
in  favor  of  the  Roumanian  principalities.  This  arrange- 
ment, accomplished  at  the  Treaty  of  Yassy,  1792, 
established  over  these  principalities  a  sort  of  distant 
Russian  protectorate.  Thus,  although  four  Russian 
interventions  had  already  occurred,  not  an  inch  of 
Christian  territory  had  been  wrested  from  the  Sultan,  and 
not  a  Christian  tribe  had  been  delivered  from  his  yoke. 

The  fifth  intervention  took  place  under  Alexander  I. 
So  long  as  his  alliance,  made  at  Tilsit  in  1807  with 
Napoleon  continued,  his  armies  were  victorious.  The 
Roumanians  were  again  conquered  as  far  as  the  Danube; 
Bulgaria,  conquered  as  far  as  the  Balkans  ;  and  under 
George  the  Black  (Kara-Georges),  Servia  won  her  inde- 
pendence with  her  own  forces  alone.  The  rupture  with 
Napoleon  compelled  the  Czar  to  sign  the  peace  of 
Bucharest  with  the  Sultan  in  1 8 1 2.  Of  all  his  conquests, 
he  retained  only  a  bit  of  Roumanian  territory,  Bessarabia 


GREEK  INDEPENDENCE.  25 

between  the  Dniester  and  the  Pruth — as  also  Ismail  and 
Kilia  on  the  lower  Danube.  The  Roumanians  and 
Bulgarians  fell  again  under  the  Ottoman  yoke,  and  Servia 
was  abandoned  to  herself.  Nevertheless,  an  amnesty 
was  stipulated  in  favor  of  the  Servians,  and  guarantees 
were  given  in  favor  of  the  Roumanians.  In  1827, 
Nicholas  I.,  by  the  Akerman  Agreement,  which  was  an 
explanation  of  the  Treaty  of  Bucharest,  caused  the 
guarantees  accorded  the  Roumanians  to  be  clearly  defined. 
As  for  the  Servians,  crushed  for  a  time  by  Ottoman 
retaliation,  they  had  taken  up  arms  under  Milosh  Obre- 
novitch,  and,  thanks  to  European  intervention,  they 
obtained,  with  certain  restrictions,  their  autonomy. 

The  sixth  intervention  of  Russia  occurred  on  the 
occasion  of  the  Greek  revolution.  On  July  8,  1827, 
Russia,  France,  and  England  entered  into  concerted  action 
by  the  Treaty  of  London.  The  united  fleets  of  the 
three  powers  annihilated  the  Turkish  and  Egyptian  fleets 
at  Navarino  (October  20).  While  a  French  army  was 
operating  in  the  Morea  to  insure  Greek  independence, 
Nicholas  I.  took  it  upon  himself  to  settle  the  rest  of  the 
Eastern  Question.  His  European  army  again  conquered 
the  Roumanians  and  Bulgarians,  invaded  Thrace,  and 
entered  Adrianople.  In  Asia,  his  forces  occupied  Turkish 
Caucasia.  The  Treaty  of  Adrianople,  concluded  in  1829, 
guaranteed  the  autonomy  of  Moldavia,  of  Wallachia, 
and  of  Servia,  and  consummated  the  independence  of 
Greece,  which  was  formed  into  a  kingdom.      Thus  were 


26  THE  CRIMEAN  WAR. 

the  hopes  that  Peter  the  Great  had  entertained  respecting 
the  Christians  of  the  East  partially  realized  ;  but  Russia 
did  not  secure  any  territory  in  Europe  except  the  isles  of 
the  Danubian  delta  ;  reserving  for  herself  freedom  of 
navigation  in  the  Black  Sea,  and  an  open  way  through 
the  straits  of  the  Bosphorus  and  the  Dardanelles.  Only 
in  Asia  did  she  secure  a  territorial  indemnity. 

The  second  eastern  war,  undertaken  by  Nicholas  I., 
and  which  began  like  the  others  by  the  conquest  of  the 
Roumanians,  brought  about  the  intervention  of  France 
and  England  in  the  Crimea,  which  caused  the  Czar 
Nicholas  to  die  of  grief,  and  which  ended  in  the  Treaty 
of  Paris  (March  30,  1856).  By  this  treaty,  his  successor, 
Alexander  II.,  had  to  renounce  all  the  advantages  gained 
in  Europe  by  the  Treaty  of  Adrianople ;  to  give  back 
the  delta  of  the  Danube  ;  to  consent  to  the  limiting  of 
his  military  power  in  the  Black  Sea  ;  and  to  abdicate  his 
exclusive  right  of  protection  over  the  Danubian  principal- 
ities, which  were  henceforth  placed  under  the  collective 
protectorate  of  the  great  powers. 

When  France  found  herself  engaged  in  a  bloody  duel 
with  the  German  Empire,  Russia  profited  by  the  occasion 
to  have  a  conference  called  at  London  in  March,  1871, 
by  which  she  secured  the  suppression  of  article  two  of 
the  Treaty  of  Paris,  which  limited  her  military  power  in 
the  Black  Sea. 

The  last  and  the  most  decisive  Russian  intervention 
was  the  one  provoked  in  1877  by  the  Bulgarian  massacres, 


THE  BULGARIAN  MASSACRES.  27 

the  Bosnian  and  Herzegovinian  revolution,  and  the 
uprising  in  Servia  and  in  Montenegro.  In  addition  to 
the  help  of  these  different  forces,  Russia  made  sure  of 
the  armed  assistance  of  the  principality  of  Roumania, 
that  had  been  formed  in  1859  by  the  union  of  the  two 
old-time  hospodarates  of  Moldavia  and  Wallachia.  She 
again  made  the  conquest  of  Bulgaria  and  of  a  part  of 
Thrace.  This  time,  it  was  in  plain  sight  of  Constanti- 
nople that  the  victorious  armies  of  Alexander  11.  halted. 
The  Sultan  had  with  which  to  oppose  them  only  twelve 
thousand  men,  encamped  on  the  heights  of  Tchadalcha. 
It  seemed,  therefore,  to  be  in  the  power  of  the  Czar  to 
bring  to  an  end  the  Ottoman  domination  in  Europe,  to 
proclaim  the  liberation  of  all  the  Christian  peoples,  and 
at  last  to  plant  the  cross  on  the  dome  of  Saint  Sophia. 
But  before  the  threatening  demonstration  of  England 
and  the  disquieting  attitude  of  Austria  and  Germany,  he 
did  not  dare  to  do  so.  He  contented  himself  with  impos- 
ing upon  the  Porte  the  Treaty  of  San  Stefano  (March 
3,  1878),  which  secured  for  the  proteges  of  Russia  an 
actual  dismemberment  of  European  Turkey.  Montenegro 
saw  its  territory  doubled  in  extent ;  Servia  and  Roumania 
were  declared  entirely  independent.  The  first  received 
the  districts  of  Nisch,  Leskovatz,  Mitrowitz,  and  Novi- 
bazar;  the  second  acquired  Dobrudscha,  bkt  on  the 
condition  that  it  return  to  Russia  the  delta  of  the  Danube, 
which  Wallachia  had  acquired  in  the  treaty  of  1856. 
Bulgaria  was  to  form  a  vassal  principality  of  Turkey. 


28  LAST  TURKISH  WAR. 

Her  territory  extended  from  the  Danube  to  the  Black 
and  JEge^n  Seas,  leaving  around  Constantinople  and 
Salonica  only  some  fragments  of  Ottoman  territory.  In 
Asia,  Russia  acquired  the  fortresses  and  districts  of 
Batum,  Kars,  Ardahan,  and  Bavazid.  Moreover,  Turkey 
was  to  pay  a  war  indemnity  of  three  hundred  and  ten 
million  rubles. 

Thus  Russia  took,  so  to  speak,  nothing  for  herself  in 
Europe.  It  was  sufficient  for  her  that  Roumania,  Servia, 
Montenegro,  and  Bulgaria  were  completely  liberated  and 
organized.  Of  course,  she  hoped  that  these  petty  states 
that  owed  their  very  existence  to  her  would  be  more 
docile  to  her  influence  than  to  that  of  the  Sultan  ;  less 
accessible  to  the  hostile  influences  of  the  German  and 
English  powers  ;  that  their  ports  would  be  open  to  her, 
and  that  their  armies  would  constitute  auxiliary  corps  of 
the  Russian  army. 

An  early  disillusion  came  to  the  "  Liberator  Czar." 
The  relative  disinterestedness  of  which  he  had  given 
proof  at  San  Stefano  did  not  foresee  the  jealousy  of 
Austria,  fostered  as  this  was  by  Germany  and  England. 
Under  threat  of  a  general  war,  they  demanded  a  revision 
of  that  treaty.  England  would  have  even  desired  that 
the  treaty  of  1856  should  be  taken  as  a  basis  for  discus- 
sion, as  if  she  could  proceed  with  the  victorious  Russia 
of  1878  as  she  had  done  with  the  Russia  of  1856,  con- 
quered in  the  Crimea.  The  Czar  agreed  to  the  calling 
of  a  congress  in   Berlin.      The   treaty   that   was  signed 


TREATY  OF  BERLIN.  29 

there  July  13,  1878,  curtailed  Montenegro  of  half  the 
part  assigned  her,  and  forbade  her  having  a  navy  ;  took 
back  Novibazar  and  Mitrowitz  from  Servia,  and  was 
particularly  harsh  towards  Bulgaria ;  reducing  her  territory 
by  one  third,  and  carving  the  remainder  into  two  pro- 
vinces :  Northern  Bulgaria,  with  the  title  of  "  vassal 
principality,"  and  Southern  Bulgaria,  under  the  name  of 
the  province  of  Eastern  Roumelia,  which  continued  under 
Turkish  domination,  but  which  was  to  be  administered 
by  a  Christian  government.  Increase  of  territory  was 
granted  to  Greece  by  the  addition  of  a  district  of  Epirus 
(Arta)  and  almost  all  of  Thessaly.  There  was  even 
quibbling  over  the  territory  that  Russia  had  retained  in 
Asia.  Bayazid  was  taken  from  her,  and  Batum  was  to 
be  dismantled  and  to  become  an  open  port.  What 
especially  irritated  the  Czar  was  the  fact  that  the  two 
powers  that  were  thus  depriving  him  of  the  fruits  of  his 
victories  found  means  to  slice  off  a  share  for  themselves. 
Under  the  pretext  of  administering  their  affairs,  Austria 
secured  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina,  and,  by  a  separate 
treaty,  England  had  given  to  her  by  the  Sultan  the  island 
of  Cyprus  (30th  of  May  and  4th  of  June)  and  a  control- 
ling situation  in  Anatolia.' 

Emperor  Alexander  II.  had  run  the  danger  of  a 
European  war  in  order  to  carry  out  his  programme  of 
"  liberation."     The  danger  still  remained  imminent,  so 

(i)  A.  d'Avril,  Negociations  relatives  au  trait'e  de  Berlin  et  aux 
arrangements  qui  ont  sui-vi.      Paris,  1886. 


30  THE  PANSLAVIC  AGITATION— NIHILISM. 

long  as  he  did  not  accept  the  provisions  of  the  Berlin 
Treaty.  There  threatened  to  spring  up  again,  at  each 
of  the  manifold  incidents  that  arose  over  the  task  of  sett- 
ling the  boundaries  of  the  ceded  countries,  armed  protests, 
now  by  Greece,  and  now  by  the  Albanians,  against  cer- 
tain decisions  of  the  powers  that  were  not  to  their  fancy, 
and  intrigues  by  Austria  and  England  for  the  purpose  of 
alienating  from  Russia  the  sympathies  of  the  nations 
emancipated  by  her  victories.  In  addition  to  this,  the 
Panslavic  agitation,  which  had  been  sufficiently  strong  in 
Russia  to  lead  the  government  to  run  those  risks  in  the 
East,  did  not  subside.  The  most  impetuous  minds  found 
cause  of  grievance  against  the  Czar,  that  he  had  not 
carried  out  his  undertaking  to  the  end,  and  had  his 
victorious  regiments  enter  Stamboul,  at  the  peril  of  a 
conflict  with  the  English  in  the  verv  streets  of  that 
capital.  The  Liberals  made  a  pretext  of  the  constitutions 
granted  the  Roumanians,  the  Servians,  and  the  Bulgarians, 
to  demand  a  constitution  for  Russia.  The  Panslavist 
and  Liberal  agitation  had,  perhaps,  some  connection  with 
the  rise  of  another  agitation  which  soon  made  its  appear- 
ance, an  agitation  called  Nihilism,  of  a  character  entirely 
revolutionary  and  subversive,  and  which  fitly  terminated 
on  that  tragic  day  of  March  13,  1881,  when  the  "  Lib- 
erator Czar  "  became  the  "  Martvr  Czar." 

For  his  successor,  Alexander  IIL,  the  results  of  the 
eastern  war  were  preparing  another  series  of  disillusions. 
The  only  fruit  that  Russia  could   still   expect   from   her 


THE  INGRATITUDE  OF  NATIONS. 

sacrifices  and  her  victories  was  the  strengthening  of  her 
influence  over  the  Christian  peoples  emancipated  by  her, 
— and  their  eternal  gratitude.  Now  immediately  after 
this  war  the  most  short-sighted  Russian  statesmen  were 
constrained  to  confess  that  the  success  of  their  arms  had 
just  created  on  that  "  Way  to  Byzantium "  which 
Catherine  II.  had  so  thickly  strewn  with  premature 
triumphal  arches,  obstacles  more  insurmountable  than 
those  which  the  armies  of  the  Sultan  had  ever  been  able 
to  oppose  to  the  armies  of  Alexander  I.  or  of  Nicholas 
I., — more  insurmountable  than  the  Danube  or  the  Bal- 
kans, formerly  bristling  with  the  fortresses  of  the  Otto- 
mans. These  new  obstacles  consisted  in  the  existence 
itself  of  the  emancipated  nations,  and  their  attachment 
to  their  newly  found  freedom.  Thus  it  was  that  France, 
after  she  had  emancipated  Belgium  under  Louis-Philippe 
and  Italy  under  Napoleon  III.,  found  that  she  had  raised 
upon  her  northern  and  southeastern  frontiers  barriers  far 
more  impregnable  than  the  armies  or  the  fortresses  of 
Austria ;  that  she  had  closed  forever  against  herself  those 
Belgian  and  Lombard  battlefields  over  which  her  ensigns 
of  victory  had  so  often  floated.  In  the  formation  of  an 
Italian  kingdom,  France  created  the  chief  obstacle  in  the 
way  of  her  own  expansion  on  the  shores  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean. 

The  French  have  naturally  and  repeatedly  denounced 
the  ingratitude  of  Italy  ;  nor  can  the  Russians  be  blamed 
for  their  grief  over  the  ingratitude  of  the   Roumanians, 


32  ROUMANIA. 

the  Servians,  the  Bulgarians,  and  the  Greeks.  But  such 
is  human  nature!  The  feeling  of  independence  and  of 
national  pride  among  newly  born  peoples  will  always 
outweigh  the  feeling  of  gratitude  towards  their  liberators. 
In  this  respect  there  was  no  difference  between  the 
peoples  joined  to  the  Russians  merely  by  religion,  like 
the  Roumanians  and  the  Greeks,  and  those  who  were 
related  to  them  both  by  religion  and  race,  like  the 
Bulgarians  and  the  Servians.  In  former  times,  when 
the  Ottoman  yoke  rested  upon  them  with  its  frightful 
burden,  assuredly  they  would  all  have  joyfully  accepted 
the  lordship  of  the  Czar  in  exchange  for  that  of  the 
Sultan  ;  but  now,  when  it  was  a  question  of  choosing 
between  the  domination  of  the  Czar  and  their  own  inde- 
pendence, there  could  be  no  hesitation  with  any  of  them. 
The  Russians  had  done  much  for  the  Roumanians. 
Even  when  they  had  been  unsuccessful  in  wresting  their 
territory  from  Turkey,  they  had  in  the  treaties  of 
Kairnaji,  Yassy,  Bucharest,  Akerman,  and  Adrianople, 
stipulated  precious  guarantees  for  their  proteges  and  then, 
later,  secured  for  them  an  almost  complete  autonomy. 
In  concert  with  France,  in  1861,  they  had  made  the 
Sultan  accept  the  union  of  Moldavia  and  Wallachia  into 
one  province.  In  1878,  they  assured  this  principality 
of  Roumania  its  full  independence,  and,  in  1881,  they 
consented  to  its  being  organized  into  a  kingdom.  But 
the  new  King  of  Roumania,  Charles  of  Hohenzollern, 
and  his  new  subjects   meant  to  remain  independent   of 


SERVIA. 


33 


every  other  power,  to  have  their  own  army  and  navy, 
their  own  national  policy  and  diplomacy,  and  to  exercise 
the  right,  whenever  their  liberators  showed  themselves 
in  the  slightest  degree  meddlesome,  to  seek  help  even 
from  Russia's  rivals,  Austria,  Germany,  and  England, 
or,  even  more  than  this,  from  their  old-time  oppressor, 
the  Sultan  of  Constantinople.  More  than  once,  the 
Roumanians  raised  complaint  against  Russia,  because,  in 
1812,  she  had  annexed  the  little  Roumanian  district  of 
Bessarabia,  and  because,  in  1878,  she  compelled  them  to 
give  back  to  her  the  islands  of  the  Danubian  delta. 

It  was  the  same  with  the  principality  of  Servia,  also 
made  into  a  kingdom  in  1882,  and  which,  according  to 
the  needs  of  its  national  or  dynastic  policy,  did  not  cease 
to  oscillate  between  Russian  and  Austro-German  influ- 
ences. It  was  the  same  also  with  the  kingdom  of 
Greece,  which  paid  no  heed  to  the  remonstrances  of 
Russia,  when  her  national  ambition  was  involved,  and 
which  had  no  scruples  in  troubling  the  peace  of  the  East 
every  time  that  it  was  possible  for  her  to  raise  the  question 
of  uniting  to  the  Hellenic  state  either  Epirus  or  Northern 
Thessaly  or  Macedonia  or  Crete. 

The  country  that  was  under  the  greatest  obligation  to 
Russia  was  Bulgaria.  If  France  or  England  had  at  times 
assisted  in  the  liberation  of  the  Roumanians,  the  Servians, 
and  the  Greeks,  it  was  to  Russia  alone  that  the  B^garians 
were  indebted  for  this  deliverance.  Immediately  after 
the  "  Bulgarian  atrocities  "  of  1875,  Russia  had  hastened 


34  BULGARIA. 

to  her  help.  From  the  condition  of  simple  ra'ias  oppressed 
by  Turkey  and  cruelly  treated  by  the  Tcherkesses  and 
the  Bashi-Bazouks,  she  had  caused  them  to  be  instantly 
'raised  to  the  dignity  of  a  free  people.  At  San  Stefano, 
she  had  endeavored  to  unite  them  into  one  state,  the 
most  powerful  of  the  Balkan  peninsula  ;  which  would 
have  extended  from  the  Danube  to  the  Black  and  i^gean 
Seas  ;  and  she  accepted  only  with  deepest  reluctance  the 
mutilation  and  dismemberment  that  the  Treaty  of  Berlin 
imposed  upon  "  Great  Bulgaria."  She  gave  the  restricted 
principality  of  Bulgaria  at  least  a  constitution  when  she 
herself  had  none.  It  was  the  Russian  commissioner  in 
Bulgaria,  Prince  Dondukof-Korsakof,  who,  on  February 
23,  1879,  convoked  at  Tirnovo  the  first  "constituency 
assembly  "  ;  it  was  he  who  presided  at  the  meeting  of  the 
first  "  legislative  assembly,"  or  Sobranie  ;  it  was  he  who 
espoused  the  cause  of  their  prince,  Alexander  of  Batten- 
berg  ;  it  was  he  who  organized  a  Bulgarian  army  of  one 
hundred  thousand  men  supplied  with  valiant  Russian 
officers,  well  equipped,  well  drilled,  and  provided  with 
excellent  artillery.  Nevertheless,  this  people  and  this 
prince,  who  owed  everything  to  Russia,  began  at  once 
to  practice  a  policy  in  which  the  advice  of  the  Czar 
Alexander  III.  was  no  longer  heeded.  They  set  out  to 
remove  the  Russians  who  had  portfolios  in  their  ministry 
and  positions  in  their  army.  In  spite  of  the  Czar,  they 
brought  about  the  revolution  of  Philippopolis  in  September, 
1885,  which  ended  in  the  union  of  the  Bulgarian  princi- 


RESULTS  OF  EUROPEAN  WARS.  35 

pality  and  the  Bulgarian  province  of  East  Roumelia,  but 
which  provoiced  a  bloody  war  with  Servia,  jealous  at  see- 
ing her  neighbor's  increase  of  territory.  When  Alexander 
of  Battenberg  had  to  renounce  his  throne  in  1887,  it 
was  a  prince  that  posed  as  a  client  of  Austria  and  of 
Germany,  Ferdinand  of  Saxe-Coburg,  whom  the  Bulgar- 
ians called  to  rule  them.  With  his  Prime  Minister, 
Stambulof,  he  governed, — resolutely  set  against  the  in- 
fluence of  Russia ;  he  discriminated  against  her  partisans, 
and  surrounded  himself  with  her  adversaries.  And,  thus, 
the  liberation  and  the  organization  of  Bulgaria,  which 
the  Czar  had  hoped  to  be  able  to  direct,  have  gone  on 
independently  of  him,  and,  in  certain  respects,  in  opposi- 
tion to  him.  Sic  vos^  tion  vob'is !  Alexander  III.'s 
resentment  against  Bulgaria  and  her  prince  was  very 
bitter.  The  somewhat  imperious  and  meddlesome  affec- 
tion of  the  early  days  soon  turned  into  hostility.  When 
Alexander  III.  died,  in  1894,  the  rupture  was  complete 
between  the  intractable  principality  and  the  powerful 
empire. 

Thus  all  the  wars  undertaken  in  Eastern  Europe  by 
Russia,  from  Peter  the  Great  in  171 1,  down  to  Alexan- 
der II.  in  1877,  have  ended,  except  in  Asia  and  on  the 
north  coast  of  the  Black  Sea,  so  far  as  territorial  expan- 
sion is  concerned,  in  most  meagre  results.  Sqven  great 
wars  have  brought  her  only  a  strip  of  Roumanian  terri- 
tory between  the  Dniester  and  the  Pruth,  and  another 
Roumanian   bit   of  land   in   the   delta  of  the    Danube. 


36  NICHOLAS  II. 

Even  this  last  morsel,  acquired  in  1829  and  restored  in 
1856,  was  won  back  in  1877  only  at  the  cost  of  vehe- 
ment faultfinding  upon  the  part  of  the  Roumanian  people. 
Russia,  whose  fleets  have  twice — at  Tchesme  in  1770, 
and  at  Navarino,  in  1827, — annihilated  the  naval  power 
of  Turkey,  have  never  been  able  to  secure  even  an  island 
in  the  JEgean  Sea. 

Thus  much  for  material  advantages.  As  to  satisfac- 
tion of  a  moral  character,  the  Russian  soldiers  have  never 
been  able  to  enter  Stamboul,  nor  to  pray  in  Saint  Sophia  ; 
and  as  to  gratitude  upon  the  part  of  the  liberated  peoples, 
we  have  seen  what  Alexander  II.  and  Alexander  III. 
could  never  have  dreamed  of. 

Their  successor,  the  present  Emperor,  Nicholas  II., 
seems  to  have  taken  it  for  granted  that  in  the  direction 
of  the  Danube,  of  the  Black  Sea,  and  of  the  JEgezn  Sea 
the  destiny  of  Russia  is  fixed  for  a  long  time  to  come. 
In  these  directions,  she  has  no  longer  any  moral  or 
material  advantages  to  gain,  and  the  age  of  sentimental 
undertakings  is  also  at  an  end.  Unless  there  should 
come  some  European  overturning,  the  famous  "  Eastern 
Question  "  will  have  for  Russia  only  an  archaeological 
interest.  All  that  Nicholas  II.  is  doing  seems  to  indicate 
that  this  is  his  conviction.  He  shows  no  interest  in  the 
party  struggles  and  ministerial  crises  in  the  Roumanian 
and  Servian  kingdoms  ;  towards  the  Bulgarians,  he  shows 
neither  jealous  affection  not  the  irreconcilable  rancor  of 
his  father.     Whenever  the  Prince  and  people  of  Bulgaria 


THE  TURKO-GRECIAN  WAR. 


37 


have  manifested  a  desire  for  reconciliation  with  Russia, 
he  has  cordially  welcomed  them ;  he  sent  a  representa- 
tive to  the  orthodox  baptism  of  the  Crown  Prince  Boris, 
but  apparently  without  forming  any  illusions  as  to  what  he 
might  expect  of  his  proteges.  When  the  Cretan  insurrec- 
tion occurred,  and  the  war  foolishly  undertaken  by  the 
Greeks  against  Turkey  was  declared,  he  was  careful  not 
to  assume  a  leading  role.,  something  that  his  three  prede- 
cessors would  not  have  failed  to  do.  On  the  contrary, 
he  seemed  to  sink  Russia  in  the  "  European  Concert," 
to  associate  her  in  all  the  decisions  of  the  five  other  great 
powers,  and  purely  and  simply  to  accept  accomplished 
facts.  Also,  when  the  Armenian  troubles  and  massacres 
took  place,  he  did  not  attempt  to  intervene,  nor  to  arro- 
gate to  himself,  either  by  land  or  sea,  the  role  of  liberator 
of  this  other  oppressed  people.  He  has  rather  favored  a 
temporizing  policy,  and  has  discouraged  the  plans  formed 
by  the  other  powers  to  send  European  fleets  to  the  very 
walls  of  the  Seraglio,  and  to  impose  by  force  reforms 
upon  the  Sultan  Abdul-Hamid.  On  the  other  hand,  in 
certain  other  directions,  in  that  of  the  Indian  Ocean,  in 
that  of  British  India,  and  in  that  of  the  China  and  Japan 
Seas,  Russia  has  followed  a  very  formal,  a  very  decided 
policy.  At  once  very  energetic  and  skillful  in  this  policy, 
she  has,  at  the  same  time,  acted  in  entire  independence 
of  the  "  European  Concert." 


Russia  in  Asia 


THE  SOUTHWARD  EXPANSION  OF  RUSSIA 
IN  ASIA. 

An  Asiatic  Power— Wars  and  Treaties  with  Persia— A 
Way  to  the  Indian  Ocean — In  the  Caucasus — Paramount 
in  Persia. 

p^  the  policy  of  the  present 
Emperor  of  the  Russias  seems 
to  be  inspired  by  other  principles 
than  those  of  his  predecessors  ; 
if  this  policy  has  shown  itself 
to  be  essentially  peaceable  and 
disinterested  in  Europe;  if  it 
has  shifted  its  sphere  of  activity 
from  the  West  in  order  to  devote  all  its  efforts  to  South- 
ern and  especially  to  Eastern  Asia, — this  is  perhaps  due 
to  the  impressions  made  upon  the  Czar  dunng  his 
extended  travels  in  the  years  1890  and  1891,  while  he 
was  still  only  the  Czarovitch  Nicholas.  He  visited 
Greece,  Egypt,  British  India,  French  Indo-China,  Japan, 
and  China.  Then,  disembarking  at  Vladivostock,  a 
powerful  Russian  naval  station  on  a  bay  of  the  Sea  of 
Japan,  he  returned  overland  to  St.  Petersburg,  crossing 
the  whole  extent  of  Siberia.  The  Czarovitch,  of  course, 
did  not  give  his  impressions  a  literary  form  ;  but  one  of 

(40) 


^At 

i^pp§5?Tssrai 

Ir^ 

^^kjj^ 

1 

8 

|M 

^ 

^^m 

^ 

s 

^S 

TO  THE  INDIAN  OCEAN.  41 

his  travelling  companions,  Prince  Oukhtomski,  has  pub- 
lished his  in  two  luxurious  volumes,  magnificently 
illustrated  by  the  Russian  artist  Karazine.' 

The  opinions  of  Prince  Oukhtomski  seem  to  reveal  a 
new  element  in  Russian  policy.  Formerly  the  Russians 
were  indignant  over  Prince  Bismarck's  reported  observa- 
tion that  "  Russia  has  nothing  to  do  in  the  West.  Her 
mission  is  in  Asia  ;  there  she  represents  civilization." 
Prince  Oukhtomski  is  not  far  from  holding  the  same 
opinion  as  did  this  envious  foe  of  his  country.  For  a 
few  parcels  of  territory  conquered  with  such  difficulty  in 
the  West,  what  bloody  wars  has  she  not  endured  ?  Her 
efforts  to  obtain  access  to  the  sea  have  been  but  half 
successful.  The  White  Sea,  blocked  with  ice;  the 
Baltic,  as  much  Scandinavian  and  German  as  Russian, 
closed  to  her  on  the  west  by  the  Sound  and  the  Belts ; 
the  Black  Sea,  only  yet  half  Russian,  and  closed  on  the 
southwest  by  the  Bosphorus  and  the  Dardanelles  ;  and 
the  Mediterranean  itself,  with  England  holding  Gibraltar, 
Malta,  Cyprus,  Egypt,  and  the  Suez  Canal, — are  these 
seas,  so  little  available,  sufficient  for  the  needs  of  the 
expansion  of  the  mighty  continental  empire  that  Russia 
is  to-day  ?  In  Asia,  on  the  contrary,  who  knows  whether 
by  the  Euphrates  and  the  Persian  Gulf,  by  Afghanistan 
and  the  Indus,  she  is  not  going  to  be  able  to  open  her 
way    to    the    Indian    Ocean  ?      Who    knows    whether, 

(i)  Le  prince  Ouk.htomsk.i,    Voyage  de  Son   Altesse  Imp'eriale   le 
C%aro<vitch  en  orient,  Paris,  1898. 


42  AN  ASIATIC  POWER. 

already  mistress  of  the  Okhotsk  Sea,  she  will  not  become 
mistress  also  of  the  Sea  of  Japan  and  the  Yellow  Sea, 
both  opening  with  broad  outlets  into  the  immensity  of  the 
Pacific  ?  Now,  the  importance  that  in  ancient  times 
the  Mediterranean  had  for  mankind,  and  which  the 
Atlantic  possessed  from  the  fifteenth  to  the  nineteenth 
century,  seems  to-day  to  be  shifting  to  the  Pacific  Ocean. 
Of  all  the  nations  bordering  on  this  truly  universal 
ocean,  the  Russian  Empire  is  destined  to  be  one  of  the 
most  powerful.  As  to  territorial  conquests,  how  are 
those  that  Russia  won  in  little  Europe,  where  every 
square  mile  cost  her  a  battle,  to  be  compared  with  those 
which,  with  infinitely  less  sacrifice  and  effort,  she 
has  already  won,  or  can  yet  win,  in  Asia  .'  Bismarck 
spoke  in  disdain  of  the  mission  of  Russia  in  Asia.  Prince 
Oukhtomski  speaks  of  it  with  pride  :  "The  time  has 
come  for  the  Russians  to  have  some  definite  idea  regarding 
the  heritage  that  the  Jenghis  Khans  and  the  Tamerlanes 
have  left  us.  Asia  !  we  have  been  part  of  it  at  all  times  ; 
we  have  lived  its  life  and  shared  its  interests ;  our 
geographical  position  irrevocably  destines  us  to  be  the 
head  of  the  rudimentary  powers  of  the  East." 

From  the  thirteenth  to  the  fifteenth  century,  Russia 
was  a  province  of  the  Mongol  Empire.  Everything  that 
constituted  that  Mongol  Empire,  however,  is  perhaps 
destined  to  become  onlv  a  province  of  Russia.  The 
capital  will  simply  be  transferred  from  Karakorum  or 
from  the  shores  of  the  Amur  to  the  banks  of  the  Neva. 


HEIR  TO  THE  MONGOL  EMPIRE.  43 

Asiatic  in  their  mixture  of  races,  Asiatic  in  their  his- 
tory (conquered  in  the  thirteenth  century,  conquering 
since  the  sixteenth),  the  Russians  possess  to  a  higher 
degree  than  either  the  French  or  the  Anglo-Saxons  an 
understanding  of  things  Asiatic.  They  have  all  the 
right  that  is  possible  to  supplant  "  those  colonies  of  the 
Germanic  and  the  Latin  races  that  are  taking  unwilling 
Asia  under  their  tutelage."  Moreover,  the  true  succes- 
sor in  Asia  of  the  old-time  czars  or  khans  of  the  Fin- 
nish race  is  not  the  Bogdy— Khan  who  rules  at  Pekin, 
but  "  the  White  Czar  who  reigns  at  St.  Petersburg."  In 
one  of  the  pagodas  of  Canton  are  to  be  seen,  as  Prince 
Oukhtomski  assures  us,  four  colossal  figures,  called  "  the 
kings  of  the  four  cardmal  points,"  and  Prince  Oukh- 
tomski felt  confident  that  it  was  to  "  the  King  of  the 
North  "  that  the  people  rendered  the  greatest  homage. 

Laying  aside  these  dreams  of  the  future,  let  us  see 
what,  up  to  the  present  time,  has  been  actually  accom- 
plished to  bring  about  their  realization.  The  efforts  of 
the  Russians  throughout  their  history  as  an  Asiatic  power 
are  connected  with  one  or  the  other  of  two  great  move- 
ments :  her  southward  expansion  towards  Persia  and 
British  India,  and  her  eastward  expansion  in  the  regions 
bordering  on  China,  Corea,  and  Japan. 

In  1554,  during  the  reign  of  Ivan  the  TerVible,  the 
Russians  gained  a  foothold  on  the  Caspian  Sea  by  the 
conquest  of  the  czarate  of  Astrakhan  and  of  the  lower 
Volga.     Towards  the  close  of  his  life,  Peter  the  Great 


44  EARLY  PERSIAN  WARS. 

waged  war  on  Persia,  captured  Derbend  on  the  Caspian, 
and  occupied  the  provinces  of  Daghestan,  Shirvan, 
Ghilan,  and  Mazandaran,  and  the  cities  of  Rasht  and 
Astrabad.  The  unhealthy  character  of  these  regions 
made  them  "  the  cemetery  of  Russian  armies,"  and  the 
successors  of  the  great  Czar  had  to  abandon  them.  A 
war  undertaken  by  Catherine  II.,  also  in  the  last  years  of 
her  reign,  ended  in  the  same  result,  and  her  son,  Paul  I., 
recalled  the  troops.  In  the  region  of  the  Caucasus,  the 
Russians  had  gained  a  foothold,  between  the  years  1774- 
1784,  by  the  accjuisition  of  the  Kuban  as  far  as  the 
Terek,  and,  strangely  enough,  it  was  not  on  the  northern 
slope  of  the  mountains,  but  upon  the  southern  that  they 
were  to  begin  the  conquest  of  this  Caucasus.  In  1783, 
the  King,  or  Czar,  of  Georgia,  Hcraclius,  declared  him- 
self to  be  the  vassal  of  Catherine  II.  in  order  that  he 
might  have  her  assistance  against  the  Persians  and  the 
Ottomans.  In  1799,  his  son,  George  XII.,'  formally 
ceded  his  state  to  Paul  I.,  although  his  son,  David,  con- 
tinued to  govern  until  1803,  when  the  annexation  was 
consummated.  This  acquisition  brt)ught  Russia  into 
collision  with  the  Persians  and  the  Ottomans  on  one 
hand,  and,  on  another,  with  the  independent  tribes  of  the 
Caucasus.  By  the  Treaty  of  Gulistan,  in  i  8 1  3,  Persia 
ceded  to    Russia   Daghestan,  Shirvan,   and   Shusha,  and 

(i)  Dubrovine,  Georges  XII.,  dernier  tsar  de  Georgie,  etT annex- 
ion a  la  Russie  (in  Russian),  St.  Petersburg,   1897. 


IN  THE  CAUCASUS.  45 

renounced  all  claims  upon  Georgia  and  other  territories 
of  the  Caucasus.  Another  war  broke  out  in  1826, 
which  was  terminated  by  the  Treaty  of  Turkmanshai, 
February  22,  1828,  by  which  Persia  surrendered  her  two 
Armenian  provinces',  Nakhitchevan  and  Erivan.  The 
same  year,  in  the  Treaty  of  Adrianople,  Turkey  gave 
over  to  Russia  the  fortresses  and  districts  of  Anapa,  Poti, 
and  Akhalzikh,  and  all  rights  (bitterly  contested  by  the 
inhabitants)  over  Imeritia,  Mingrelia,  and  Abkhasia. 
Then  began,  in  the  new  possessions,  the  task  of  pacify- 
ing the  wild  mountaineers  of  these  regions,  and,  also  the 
Tcherkesses,  or  Circassians,  of  the  northern  slope. 
The  Circassians  and  the  Abkhasui  roused  to  fanaticism 
by  the  soldier  priest,  the  Imam  Shamyl,  held  out  against 
the  Russians  for  nearly  thirty  years.  In  1844,  Russia  had 
in  the  Caucasus  two  hundred  thousand  soldiers,  com- 
manded by  her  best  generals.  The  capture  of  Vedeni, 
in  1858,  and  the  surrender  of  Shamyl,  a  year  later, 
assured  the  pacification  of  the  Caucasus.  The  increase 
of  territory  that  Russia  made  at  the  expense  of  Turkey, 
in  1878,  by  the  Treaties  of  San  Stefano  and  Berlin, 
included  the  districts  of  Kars,  Ardahan,  and  Olty,  and 
the  port  of  Batum,  and  fixed  the  boundary  line  between 
Turkey  and  Russia  as  it  has  since  remained. 

Since  the  Treaty   of   1828,   Persia   under  the  Shahs, 
Fet-Aly-Khan,  Mohammed,  Nasr-ed-Din,  and  Muzafer- 

(i)    Lord   Curzon,    Persia  and  the  Persian  ^estion,   London, 
1892. 


46  PARAMOUNT  IN  PERSIA. 

ed-Din,  has  fallen  almost  entirely  under  Russian  influ- 
ence. In  1837-38,  the  Shah  Mohammed,  with  an  army 
commanded  by  Russian  officers,  besieged  Herat,  defended 
by  Afghans  under  the  leadership  of  English  officers.  In 
1856,  the  Shah  Nasr-ed-Din,  at  the  suggestion  of  Rus- 
sia, besieged  and  captured  Herat ;  but  the  English  com- 
pelled him  to  abandon  his  prize,  by  making  a  descent  on 
the  Persian  Gulf,  where  they  captured  the  port  of  Bushire 
and  the  island  of  Karrack,  which  they  have  kept.  In 
1841,  Persia  ceded  to  Russia  the  Caspian  port  of  Ashu- 
rada,  near  Astrabad ;  in  188 1,  Askabad  was  given  to  the 
same  power,  and,  in  1885,  Serakhs, — all  three  places 
very  important  strategic  points  on  the  eastern  frontier. 
Persia  has  also  agreed  to  the  building  of  Russian  railroads 
that  are  to  pass  through  her  territory  and  terminate  on 
the  Persian  Gulf.  The  present  year,  she  has  negotiated 
a  loan  of  twenty-two  million  five  hundred  thousand 
rubles  through  the  agency  of  the  "bank  of  Persia," 
established  under  Russian  auspices.  This  loan  is  pay- 
able in  seventy-five  years,  and  the  interest  is  secured  by 
all  the  customs  revenues  of  the  kingdom,  save  those  of 
the  Persian  Gulf.  The  Shah  has  bound  himself  not  to 
seek  further  loans  of  any  other  European  power,  and  has 
thereby  placed  himself  financially  in  the  hands  of  Russia. 
It  is  thus  that  Russia,  bv  her  diplomacy,  by  her  banks, 
and  by  her  railroads,  making  Persia  her  political  and  com- 
mercial vassal,  has  succeeded  in  furthering  her  scheme  of 
expansion  towards  the  Persian  Gulf  and  the  shores  of 
the  Indian  Ocean. 


FURTHER  CONQUESTS. 

Expansion  Towards  India — Napoleon — The  Conquest  of 
THE  Khans — In  Afghanistan — The  "Key  of  the  Indies" — 
In  Touch  With  India — Abyssinia — British  Over-Confidence. 


OWARDS  British  India  Rus- 
sian expansion  was  to  seek  still 
other  channels.  The  con- 
quests in  the  Caucasus,  which 
we  have  been  reviewing,  open- 
ed the  way  along  the  western 
and  southern  sides  of  the  Cas- 
pian Sea.  But  for  a  long  time 
the  Russians  had  been  endeavoring  to  turn  the  sea  from 
its  northern  side.  In  the  reign  of  the  Empress  Anna 
Ivanovna,  hordes  of  Kirghiz,  whose  camping  grounds 
lay  to  the  east  of  the  Ural  River,  submitted  to  Russia 
(1734).  Her  sway  was  then  extended  into  Turkestan, 
that  expanse  of  steppes  and  oases  watered  by  the  Jax- 
artes  (Sir-Daria)  and  the  Oxus  (Amu-Daria),  that  empty 

(47) 


48  TURKESTAN. 

into  the  Aral  Sea,  a  region  that  is  bounded  on  the  west  by 
the  Caspian  Sea,  on  the  south  by  Persia  and  Afghanistan, 
on  the  east  by  the  Chinese  Empire,  and  on  the  north  by 
Siberia.  Here  was  located  ancient  Djagatai,  the  debris  of 
former  Mongol  Empires.' 

When  the  Russians  saw  these  vast  plains  spread  out 
before  them,  they  at  first  thought  that  they  were  near 
British  India,  and  that  an  entrance  to  that  rich  peninsula 
would  be  as  easy  to  them  as  it  had  been  to  so  many 
Asiatic  conquerors  that  had  gone  forth  from  the  steppes 
of  Turkestan  or  the  valleys  of  Afghanistan.  From  this 
conviction  was  born  the  first  schemes  that  the  Russians 
entertained  for  the  conquest  of  Hindustan.  Even  Peter 
the  Great  thought  of  it.  In  171  7,  he  sent  against  Khiva 
an  expedition  under  Peter  Bekovitch  that  perished  on  the 
way.  A  certain  A.  M.  de  Saint  Genie  proposed  a  plan 
for  the  conquest  of  Hindustan  to  Catherine  II.  in  1791  ; 
but  the  most  celebrated  of  all  these  projects  was  the  one 

(i)  Subsequently  it  was  broken  up  into  numerous  states,  the 
principal  ones  being  the  khanate  of  Khokand,  with  its  chief  cities 
Turkistan,  Tashkend,  Tchimkend,  and  Khodjend  on  the  upper 
Jaxartes,  or  Sir-Daria  ;  the  khanate  of  Balkh  (ancient  Bactria),  and 
the  khanate  of  Samarkand,  fallen  into  dependency  upon  the  khan- 
ate of  Bokhara,  on  the  upper  Oxus,  or  Amu-Daria  ;  the  khanate  of 
Khiva  on  the  lower  Oxus;  and  on  the  Kashgar  and  Yarkand  Rivers 
emptying  into  Lake  Lob-Nor,  and  the  Hi  flowing  into  Lake  Balkash, 
khanates  (Kashgar,  Yarkand,  and  Kuldja)  that  belonged  to  China. 
Outside  of  the  districts  inhabited  by  a  settled  people  are  the  deserts 


PLANS  FOR  INDIAN  CONQUESTS.  49 

that  Paul  I.  submitted  to  Napoleon  Bonaparte,  then  first 
Consul  of  the  French  Republic,  whose  ally  against  Eng- 
land he  had  become.  The  plan  was  to  place  two  armies 
in  the  field.  General  Knorring,  with  the  Cossacks  of 
the  Don  and  other  Russian  troops,  was  to  march  by 
Khiva  and  Bokhara  to  the  upper  Indus,  while  thirty-five 
thousand  French  and  thirty-five  thousand  Russians,  that 
Paul  I.,  inspired  by  chivalric  generosity,  proposed  placing 
under  the  command  of  Massena,  the  conqueror  of  the 
Russians  at  the  battle  of  Zurich,  were  to  unite  at  Astra- 
bad  on  the  southern  shore  of  the  Caspian  Sea.  Thence 
they  were  to  make  their  way  by  Herat  and  Kandahar  to 
the  upper  Indus  to  join  forces  with  the  other  army. 
Then,  altogether,  French,  Russians,  Persians,  Turcomans, 
and  Afghans,  they  would  pour  down  into  India,  proclaim- 
ing to  the  princes  and  the  people  of  the  peninsula  the  fall 
of  English  tyranny  and  their  independence.  "  All 
the  treasures  of  India  were  to  be  their  recompense." 
The  execution  of  this  plan  was  even  begun.     The  Cos- 

of  sand  over  which  wander  nomadic  tribes.  To  the  north  of  the 
Jaxartes,  are  the  Kirghiz,  divided  into  several  hordes,  and  the 
Turkomans,  or  Turkmens,  on  the  east  of  the  Caspian  Sea. — Con- 
sult Krahmer,  Russland  in  Asien,  vol.  i.,  Transkaspian  und  seine 
Eisenbahn,  vol.  ii.,  Mittel-Asien,  Leipzig,  1898-99.  Makcheef, 
Coup  d^  oeil  historique  sur  le  Turkestan  et  la  marche  prog^essi^je  des 
Russes  (in  Russian)  St.  Petersburg,  1890.  Albrecht,  Russisches 
Central-Asien,  Hamburg,  1896.  H.  Mozer,  A  tracers  V Asie  cen- 
trale,  Paris,  1885. 


50  OASES  OF  TURKESTAN. 

sacks  of  the  Don,  under  their  ataman^  Orlof-Denissof, 
were  already  across  the  Volga,  when  the  news  of  the 
death  of  Paul  I.  recalled  them  to  their  camps.* 

The  visionary  character  of  this  scheme  has  been 
demonstrated,  during  the  present  century,  by  the  difficul- 
ties that  the  Russian  armies  have  had  to  encounter  in 
winning  their  wav  over  a  very  small  fraction  of  the 
immense  journey  marked  out  in  1800.  At  the  cost  of 
enormous  effort,  the  oases  of  Turkestan,  which  in  the 
mind  of  Paul  I.  were  to  be  simply  halting  places  in  the 
long  march,  have  had  to  be  conquered  one  by  one ;  one 
by  one,  deep  valleys  and  rocky  bluffs,  defended  by  war- 
like tribes,  have  had  to  be  captured  and  held.  To-day, 
even  with  these  avenues  of  approach  secured,  the  goal 
seems  as  far  off  as  it  did  to  the  optimistic  imagination  of 
the  Czar  Paul  I.  In  1839,  Nicholas  I.,  wishing  to  punish 
the  Khan  of  Khiva,  who  was  capturing  Russian  mer- 
chants and  pillaging  Russian  caravans,  despatched  a  body 
of  troops  commanded  by  General  Perovski.     The  severe 

(i)  General  Batorski,  Projets  d' expedition  dans  V Indoustan  sous 
Napoleon,  Paul  /.,  et  Alexandre  I.,  (in  Russian)  St.  Petersburg, 
1886.  H.  S.  Edwards,  Russian  Projects  against  India.  On  the 
Russian  Expedition  in  Turkestan,  see  Hugo  Stumin,  Rapports, 
Khi'va  (translated  from  the  German),  Paris,  1874;  A.  N.  Kou- 
ropatkine  (at  present  Russian  Minister  of  War),  Turcomania  and 
the  Turcomans  (translated  into  English  from  the  Russian  by  Robert 
Mitchell);  Skobelef,  Rapports  sur  les  campagnes  de  iSyg-iSSi 
(English  translation,  London,  1881);  Man'in,  Russian  Campaigns 
Among  the  Tekke-Turcomans  (from  Russian  official  sources). 


DIFFICULTIES  IN  THE  WAY  TO  INDIA.  51 

winters  of  the  steppes  and  the  deep  snow  compelled  him, 
when  half  way  to  his  destination,  to  return.  Neverthe- 
less, the  Khan,  intimidated  by  this  demonstration,  liber- 
ated the  Russian  prisoners  (1840),  and  in  1842  con- 
sented to  acknowledge  the  over-lordship  of  Russia. 
Two  years  later,  the  eastern  Kirghiz  also  submitted.  In 
order  to  protect  these  new  subjects  against  the  Khan  of 
Khokand  it  was  necessary  to  wage  war  with  the  latter. 
From  i860  to  1864,  the  leaders  of  the  Russian  troops, 
Perovski,  Kolpakovski,  Verevkine,  TchernaiefF,  captured 
the  fortresses  of  Ak-Mesjed,  Turkestan,  Aulie-Ata, 
Tchimkend,  and  finally,  Tashkend,  a  city  of  one  hun- 
dred thousand  souls,  and  the  commercial  emporium  of 
that  region. 

The  Emir  of  Bokhara  attempted  to  intervene,  and  had 
a  "  holy  war "  preached  by  the  fanatical  Mollahs ;  but 
he  was  conquered  in  the  battle  of  Irjar  (1866),  and 
promised  to  pay  a  war  indemnity. 

However  far  the  Russians  might  still  be  from  the 
frontier  of  India,  England  was  nevertheless  disturbed  at 
their  success.  The  official  journals  of  St.  Petersburg 
amused  themselves  with  pacific  declarations,  announcing 
that  there  was  no  intention  of  conquering  Bokhara ;  but 
the  Czar  organized  the  territories,  already  submissive, 
into  "  the  general  government  of  Turkestan,"  akjd  Gen- 
eral Kaufmann  was  placed  in  control.  The  Emir  of 
Bokhara,  having  refused  to  deliver  the  war  indemnity 
that  he  had  promised,  was  defeated   at  Zera-Bulak,  and 


52  CONQUEST  OF  THE  KHANS. 

was  compelled  to  sign  the  treaty  of  1868,  by  which  he 
ceded  to  the  Russians  the  khanates  of  Samarkand  and 
Zerafshan ;  recognized  a  Russian  protectorate,  and  paid 
an  indemnity  of  two  million  rubles.  The  khanate  of 
Khokand  became,  likewise,  a  vassal  state. 

The  Khan  of  Khiva  continued  to  pillage  caravans, 
and  to  hold  in  slavery  Russian  merchants.  In  1873, 
three  bodies  of  troops  were  sent  against  him  ;  one  com- 
ing from  the  shores  of  the  Caspian  Sea  under  General 
Markozof,  the  second  from  Orenburg  under  General 
Verevkine,  the  third  from  Tashkend  under  Governor- 
General  Kaufmann.  The  first,  after  a  difficult  march 
through  the  burning  sands  of  the  desert,  was  compelled 
to  fall  back.  The  other  two  entered  Khiva  almost  with- 
out striking  a  blow.  The  Khan  was  obliged  to  acknowl- 
edge himself  the  vassal  of  "the  White  Czar,"  to  cede 
all  that  part  of  his  territory  situated  on  the  right  bank  of 
the  Oxus ;  to  grant  the  Russians  the  rights  of  naviga- 
tion and  commerce,  and  to  submit  to  a  war  indemnity 
that  exhausted  his  finances.  The  Khans  that  had  yielded 
to  the  Russians  were  now  the  objects  of  the  scorn  and 
hatred  of  the  more  fanatical  among  their  Mohammedan 
subjects.  These  did  not  cease  to  rise  in  revolt  against 
them.  The  Khan  of  Khokand  preferred  to  surrender 
his  territories  to  Russia  ;  and  they  were  formed  into  the 
new  province  of  P>rghana,  in  1875.  The  same  year, 
the  Khan  of  Khiva  offered  to  surrender  his  in  exchange 
for  a  pension.     The   Russians   did  not  wish  to   annex 


THE  CHINESE  KHANS.  53 

either  this  khanate  or  that  of  Bokhara,  less  through  fear 
of  English  protests  than  because  the  existence  of  two 
vassal  Khans  would  allow  them  to  conceal  the  better 
their  political  plans.  They  maintain  them  on  their 
thrones  by  paying  them  a  pension.  To-day,  the  Khan 
of  Bokhara  is  captain  of  a  regiment  of  Terek  Cossacks, 
and  the  Khan  of  Khiva  is  lieutenant-general  of  the 
Orenburg  Cossacks. 

In  185 1,  the  Russians  had  obtained  from  China  some 
commercial  advantages  in  the  Kuldja  province.  Twenty 
years  afterwards  a  Mohammedan  adventurer,  Yakub- 
Khan  seized  the  Chinese  khanates  of  Kashgar  and  Yar- 
kand,  and  incited  a  Mohammedan  rebellion  in  Kuldja. 
The  Russians  entered  the  province,  giving  China  to 
understand  that  they  would  remain  there  until  order  was 
reestablished  (187 1).  They  would  gladly  have  annexed 
it ;  but  Chinese  troops  had  been  despatched  ;  and,  after 
years  of  marching,  they  arrived  in  Kashgar  (where 
Yakub  had  been  assassinated  in  1877),  and  upon  the 
Kuldja  frontier.  The  Russians  first  thought  of  resisting 
the  troops  and  holding  the  province  ;  but  the  territory  in 
dispute  did  not  seem  worth  the  risk  of  a  war  with  China. 
By  the  St.  Petersburg  Treaty  of  188 1,  they  gave  back 
Kuldja,  except  one  district  on  the  river  Hi,  and  renounced 
their  military  position  in  Kashgar  in  exchange  for  certain 
commercial  advantages. 

To  complete  the  conquest  of  Turkestan,  it  remained 
for  them  to   subdue  the   nomadic  Turcomans  (Tekke- 


54  THE  TURCOMANS. 

Turcomans).  This  was  the  object  of  the  brilliant  cam- 
paigns directed  by  Skobelef,  who  carried  by  assault  the 
fortress  of  Geok-Tepe  on  January  24,  1881,  with  a  loss 
to  the  enemy  of  eight  thousand  men.  Then  he  took 
Askhabad,  which  was  afterwards  ceded  by  Persia.' 

The  agreement  with  Persia  and  the  conquest  of 
Turkestan  brought  Russia's  power  to  the  frontier  of 
Afghanistan,  which  the  English  regard  as  the  protecting 
wall  of  their  Indian  Empire.  At  every  forward  move- 
ment of  the  Russians,  they  protested  or  endeavored  to 
secure  guarantees  against  a  new  advance  or  tried  to  gain 
for  themselves  some  new  strategic  point  that  would 
strengthen  their  position.  They  were  not  always  suc- 
cessful. After  the  first  siege  of  Herat  by  the  Persians, 
in  1840,  the  English  made  the  conquest  of  Kabul. 
Their  army  was  driven  out  by  an  insurrection,  and  totally 
annihilated  while  retreating  (1841).  If,  to  save  their 
honor,  they  afterwards  recaptured  Kabul,  prudence  led 
them  to  adandon  it  as  quickly  as  possible  (1842).  After 
the  annexation  or  subjection  of  the  khanates  by  the 
Russians,  the  English  again  made  their  way  mto  Kabul, 
and  left  there  a  resident  representative,  Cavagnari ;  but  a 

(i)  Colonel  Mallesson,  The  Russo-Afghan  ^estion,  1864.  Sir 
Henry  Rawlinson,  Later  Phases  of  the  Central  Asia  Sluestion,  1875. 
Kouropatkine,  Les  confines  anglo-russes  (translated  from  the  Russian 
by  G.  le  Marchand),  Paris,  1879.  P.  Lessar,  La  Russie  et 
VAngleterre  en  Asie  centrale,  Paris.  Marvin,  The  Russians  at 
Mer-v  and  Herat,  etc. 


AFGHANISTAN. 


55 


popular  uprising,  in  1879,  brought  about  the  murder  of 
Cavagnari  and  eighty-seven  of  his  retinue.  The  expedi- 
tion sent  to  avenge  this  insult  u^as  led  by  General 
Roberts,'  whom  we  see  to-day  in  South  Africa  operating 
against  the  Boers.  This  expedition,  however,  brought 
about  as  little  definite  result  as  did  the  former  intervention 
in  Afghanistan. 

In  1 88 1,  the  English  had  gained  from  the  Russians 
the  assurance  that  they  had  no  intention  of  annexing  the 
city  of  Merv,  a  very  important  strategic  point ;  but  in 
1884,  the  notables  of  that  city  presented  themselves  to 
the  Russian  commander  at  Askhabad,  and  made  declara- 
tion that  they  accepted  the  lordship  of"  the  White  Czar." 
The  English  made  complaint  to  the  cabinet  at  St.  Peters- 
burg. They  were  answered  that  the  action  of  the  people 
of  Merv  had  been  a  surprise  to  the  Russians  themselves ; 
but  that  they  believed  that  they  would  have  committed  a 
great  mistake  by  rejecting  a  submission  that  was  so 
entirely  voluntary.  The  English  had  secured  the  appoint- 
ment of  an  Anglo-Russian  commission  for  settling  the 
disputed  boundaries,  which  was  to  decide  whether  Penjdeh, 
another  very  important  point,  belonged  to  their  client, 
the  Emir  of  Afghanistan,  or  to  the  Turcoman  subjects 
of  Russia.  The  English  commissioners,  presided  over 
by  General  Lumsden,  were  the  first  to  arrive  at  the  place 

(i)  General,  now  Marshal,  Lord  Roberts  has  published  a  work, 
Forty-one  Tears  in  India. 


56  BRITAIN   VS.  RUSSIA. 

of  meeting.  They  began  by  fortifying  Herat  and  inciting 
the  Afghans  to  seize  Penjdeh.  Seeing  this,  the  chief 
Russian  commissioner,  General  Komarof,  at  the  head  of 
a  strong  Russian  force,  occupied  the  Zulfikar  Pass,  and 
made  ready  to  march  upon  Penjdeh.  While  on  the  way 
thither,  he  was  attacked  by  the  Afghans  at  Kushk.  He 
slew  five  hundred  of  their  men,  captured  two  of  their  flags 
and  all  their  artillery  (March  30,  1885).  Then  the 
English  commissioners  withdrew,  charging  Komarof  with 
having  been  the  aggressor.  Great  Britain  was  much 
irritated.  Gladstone,  who  had  the  Egyptian  Soudan  and 
the  Upper  Burmah  wars  on  his  hands,  called  upon  Parlia- 
ment for  subsidies.  The  belief  was  general  that  a  war  was 
about  to  ensue  between  "the  whale  and  the  elephant." 
Then  England  calmed  down,  and  accepted  the  explanation 
of  the  Russians,  that  the  fight  at  Kushk  was  the  result  of  a 
"mistake."  In  1885  and  1887,  she  agreed  to  the  Rus- 
sian occupation  of  Merv,  Penjdeh,  Kushk,  and  the 
Zulfikar  Pass.  The  Russians  were  now  within  one 
hundred  and  twenty  kilometres  of  Herat,  known  for  so 
long  a  time  as  the  "key  of  the  Indies." 

The  question  of  the  settlement  of  the  boundaries  was 
scarcely  disposed  of,  when  another  question  presented 
itself  in  the  settlement  of  the  boundaries  of  the  Pamirs. 
These  form  a  plateau  of  from  four  to  five  thousand 
metres  in  altitude,  known  as  the  "  roof  of  the  world," 
with  a  rigorous  climate  and  sparse  population.  This 
plateau    commands    both    Afghanistan    and    Cashmere, 


THE  PAMIRS— IN  TOUCH  WITH  INDIA.  57 

those  two  ramparts  of  India  and  Chinese  Turkestan. 
It  was  broken  up  into  petty  khanates,  over  which  the 
Khan  of  Bokhara,  the  vassal  of  the  Russians,  and  the 
Emir  of  Afghanistan,  the  chent  of  the  English,  laid 
claim  to  sovereignty.  Neither  of  them  had  recognized 
until  then  the  value  of  the  territory.  An  "  expedition 
for  study,"  accompanied  by  six  hundred  Russian  soldiers, 
made  its  appearance  in  Pamir  in  the  summer  of  1891, 
and  aroused,  by  its  presence  there,  the  protests  of  the 
English.  At  the  approach  of  winter,  the  Russians  with- 
drew ;  but  they  again  appeared  the  following  summer,  in 
larger  numbers,  under  the  command  of  Colonel  Yanof. 
They  claimed  that  they  were  insulted  by  the  Afghans, 
for  which  they  inflicted  upon  them  the  bloody  defeat  of 
Somatash  (July  1 2,),  after  which  they  fell  back  and  took 
up  their  position  at  Kalabery  on  the  Oxus.  This  clash 
of  arms  was  succeeded  by  a  diplomatic  controversv.  It 
was  not  until  1895,  after  a  keen  discussion  between  the 
two  great  powers,  each  contending  for  its  own  client,  that 
they  reached  an  agreement.  The  disputed  region  was 
divided  between  Bokhara  and  Afghanistan,  the  former 
receiving  the  little  khanates  of  Shugnan  and  Roschan, 
and  the  latter  the  khanate  of  Wakhan,  a  narrow  strip  of 
territory,  from  twenty  to  thirty  kilometres  wide,  which 
now  forms  "  a  buffer  state  "  between  the  great  empires 
of  Russia  and  Great  Britain.  Even  after  this  agreement, 
Russia  found  a  pretext  in  1899  for  occupying  the  district 
of  Sirikul,  which  belongs  to   Chinese   Pamir,  and  which 


58  ARABIA— ABYSSINIA. 

commands  the  source  of  the  Kashgar  and  Yarkand  Rivers 
(March,  1899). 

Great  Britain  having  occupied  in  Arabia  the  island 
of  Perim  in  the  tmamate  of  Muscat,  in  order  to  control 
the  outlet  of  the  Red  Sea,  and  to  establish  a  coaling  sta- 
tion in  her  maritime  route,  Russia,  in  1899,  ^^^° 
endeavored  to  obtain  from  the  Imam  the  grant  of  a  coal- 
ing station  on  his  coast.  From  this  arose  new  complaints 
and  strenuous  opposition  on  the  part  of  England.  Rus- 
sia also  established  herself,  under  color  of  orthodox  prose- 
lytism,  at  a  point  quite  as  annoying  to  British  interests, 
on  the  coast,  and  at  the  very  capital  of  Menelik,  Emperor 
of  Abyssinia.  A  first  attempt  in  this  direction  was  made 
in  1889  by  a  Russian  adventurer,  calling  himself 
Achinof,  "  the  free  Cossack."  He  took  possession  of  the 
dismantled  fort  of  Sugallo  on  the  territory  of  the  French 
colony  of  Obock.  The  former  ''  anounada  of  Sugallo  " 
drove  him  away,  and  the  Russian  government  disavowed 
his  action.  The  mission  of  Lieutenant  Machkof  (1889- 
1892),  and  the  so-called  "scientific  mission"  of  Cap- 
tain Leontief  in  1894,  thanks  to  the  ready  assistance  of 
the  French  authorities,  succeeded  much  better.  Thus 
was  Russian  influence,  in  close  harmony  with  French 
influence,  established  almost  upon  the  British  Nile.  In 
1898,  the  Russian  Colonel,  Artamonof,  with  some 
Abyssinian  troops,  endeavored  to  meet  Major  Marchand, 
who  was  moving  upon  Fashoda,  and  to  reinforce  him  on 
the  great  river. 


INDIA  THE  GOAL.  59 

The  English  alternate  between  doubting  and  believing 
that  these  expansive  movements  of  Russia  by  way  of  the 
Caucasus,  by  way  of  Turkestan,  and  by  way  of  the 
Pamirs,  are  all  directed  towards  one  goal,  the  very  one 
that  the  Czar  Paul  proposed  to  the  first  Consul  Bona- 
parte in  1800  ;  Alexander  I.  to  the  Emperor  Napoleon 
(1807);  and  General  Duhamel  to  Nicholas  I.  (1855), 
and  the  ardent  Skobelef  to  his  government.  To  many 
intelligent  Englishmen,  the  goal  of  so  much  effort  can 
be  no  other  than  the  conquest  of  India.  Now  that  the 
frontier  of  the  Russian  Pamir  is  not  more  than  twenty  or 
thirty  kilometres  from  the  kingdom  of  Cashmere,  and 
now  that  Kushk,  the  terminus  of  the  Turkestan  railroad 
system,  is  only  one  hundred  and  twenty  kilometres  from 
Herat,  the  problem  of  invading  India  is  infinitely  more 
easy  than  it  was  in  the  time  of  Bonaparte  and  Paul  I. 
Why  have  the  Russians  spent  so  much  money  and  blood 
in  the  conquest  of  the  impoverished  and  barbarous 
nations  of  those  sandy  deserts  and  almost  inaccessible 
mountains,  if  they  did  not  have  before  them,  as  a  recom- 
pense for  their  sacrifices,  what  Paul  I.  called  "  all  the 
riches  of  the  Indies." 

A  recent  historian  of  Russian  expansion,'  Alexis 
Krause,  reviewing  all  the  hardships  endured  by  Russia 
and  the  thankless  task  that  she  has  assumed,  adds,  "  On 

(i)  Alexis  K-iaMse, Russia  in  Asia,  a  Record  and  a  Study,  Lon- 
don and  New  York,  1899. 


6o  RUSSIA'S  OPPORTUNITY. 

its  own  account,  the  conquest  of  Central  Asia  is  worth- 
less. It  is  not  done  in  ignorance,  but  by  carefully 
thought-out  design,  as  part  of  a  programme,  the  execu- 
tion of  which  its  possession  will  assist.  The  capture  of 
the  khanates  was  attempted,  not  as  a  pathway  towards 
the  coveted  Persian  Gulf,  but  as  a  road  which  would  lead 
to  the  Panjab  and  all  that  is  beyond.  And  now  that 
preliminary  steps  have  been  completed,  the  serious  under- 
taking is  about  to  be  begun." 

James  MacGahan,  one  of  the  best  informed  men  on 
Eastern  affairs,  wrote  from  the  shores  of  the  Oxus  in 
1876:  "The  Russians  are  steadily  advancing  towards 
India,  and  they  will,  sooner  or  later,  acquire  a  position 
in  Central  Asia  which  will  enable  them  to  threaten  it. 
Should  England  be  engaged  in  a  European  war,  then, 
indeed,  Russia  will  probably  strike  a  blow  at  England's 
Indian  power." 

Other  Englishmen  pretend  to  believe  that  the  hypoth- 
esis of  a  conquest  of  India  "  is  too  preposterous  to 
be  entertained.  It  would  involve  the  most  terrible  and 
lingering  war  the  world  has  ever  seen.  On  the  day  that 
a  Russian  army  leaves  Balkh  or  Herat  for  Kandahar,  well 
may  the  British  commander  exclaim  :  '  Now  hath  the 
Lord  delivered  them  into  my  hand  ! '  " 

It  is  thus  that  Lord  Curzon,  the  present  Governor- 
General  of  India,  expresses  himself.  It  seems,  however, 
that  he  is  but  assuming  a  tone  of  assured  certainty  to 
conceal    his   deep  anxiety.      This   plan  of  conquest  that 


BRITISH  OVER-CONFIDENCE.  6i 

he  considers  "  too  preposterous  to  be  entertained,"  has 
been  discussed  by  other,  and  very  competent  persons, 
who  do  not  reach  conclusions  so  optimistic  as  regards 
Great  Britain.'  Perhaps,  however,  the  Russians  are  at 
present  pressing  so  closely  towards  the  frontier  of  British 
India  in  order  to  have  at  their  disposal  a  means  of  intim- 
idation, or  even  of  coercion,  for  use  in  those  very  frequent 
occasions  in  which  Great  Britain  sets  herself  in  stubborn 
opposition  to  Russia's  plans  in  other  parts  of  the  world. 
For,  at  the  present  moment,  the  Czar  Nicholas  II. 
seems  much  more  interested  in  expansion  in  the  Far 
East  than  in  any  movement  towards  the  south  of  Asia. 

(i)   Maximilian   Graf  Yorck  von   Wartenburg,  Das  Vordringen 
der  Russischen  Macht  in  Asien,  Berlin,  1900. 


In  the  Far  East 


THE  EXPANSION  OF    RUSSIA    IN   THE  FAR 
EAST.' 

The  Opening  of  Siberia — Value  of  Siberia — Chinese  Wars 

Settlements    on    the    Pacific — Chinese    Cessions — Vladi- 

vosTOCK — Russian  Influence  at  Pekin. 

HE  eastward  expansion  of  Rus- 
sia through  the  solitudes  of 
Siberia  and  among  its  barbar- 
ous tribes  began  about  the 
close  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
immediately  after  the  conquest 
of  the  Tartar  czarates  of 
Kazan  and  Astrakhan.  It 
was  between  the  years  1579  and  1584  that  the  Cossack, 
Irmak  Timofevitch,  fleeing  from  the  punishment  of  the 
law  and  the  wrath  of  the  Czar,  Ivan  the  Terrible,  with 
a  handful  of  brigands  like  himself,  Russians,  Cossacks, 
Tartars,  German  and  Polish  prisoners  of  war,  to  the 
number  of  six  hundred  and  fifty  men,  crossed   the  Ural, 

(1)  Krahmer,  Russland  in  Asien,  vol.  iii.  Sibirien  und  die grosse 
sibirische  Eisenbahn,  vol.  iv.  Russland  in  Ost- Asien,  Leipzig,  1897, 
1898.      Legros,  La  Siberie,  Paris,   1899. 

(64) 


THE  OPENING  OF  SIBERIA.  65 

traversed  the  immense,  untrodden  forests  of  the  Tobol, 
defeated  the  Tartar  Khan,  Kutchum,  took  Sibir,  his 
capital,  and  subjected  to  tribute  the  tribes  of  the  Irtysh 
and  the  Obi.  When  Irmak  Timofevitch  was  drowned  in 
the  Irtysh,  dragged  to  the  bottom  of  the  river  by  the 
weight  of  the  cuirass  given  him  by  the  Czar,  Russia 
made  a  hero,  and  the  Orthodox  Church  a  saint,  of  the  old 
outlaw.  Along  the  pathways  that  he  had  marked  out, 
there  soon  followed  a  stream  of  "  good  fellows "  of 
every  description  ,  gold-seekers,  fur-hunters,  and  peasants 
fleeing  the  estates  of  their  feudal  lords  in  search  of  gov- 
ernment lands  that  they  might  cultivate  as  freemen. 
Hither  also  flocked  religious  dissenters,  persecuted  by  the 
Orthodox  Church,  who  found  a  shelter  in  the  immensity 
of  the  Siberian  forest,  retreats  concealed  from  all  man- 
kind. Into  this  same  wilderness  escaped  the  German, 
Polish,  and  Swedish  prisoners  of  war  of  Peter  I.  and  of 
Catherine  II.  Then,  in  long,  wretched  troops  came  in 
chains  or  in  fetters  the  unhappy  serfs  deported  by  their 
masters,  often  bearing  the  marks  of  cruel  beating  and 
mutilation  ;  their  sides  scarred  by  the  knout,  and  nostrils 
or  tongue  cut  by  the  executioner;  strewing  the  highways 
with  their  corpses.  This  barbarous  feature  of  the  old 
Russian  penal  code  came  to  an  end  at  the  close  of 
the  last  century,  and  it  is  known  that  the  present  Czar, 
Nicholas  II.,  has  suppressed  deportation  into  Siberia  for 
common  law  crimes  in  order  to  purify  that  colony  of  a 
reproach  like  to  that  against  which  the  English  colonies  of 


66  VALUE  OF  SIBERIA. 

Australia  long  protested.  The  rapidity  with  which 
colonization  of  every  kind  was  spread  over  the  millions 
of  kilometers  which  the  immensity  of  Siberia  measures, 
is  shown  by  the  dates  of  the  founding  of  the  principal 
towns:  Tobolsk  on  the  Tobol  in  1587  ;  Tomsk  on  the 
Toms,  a  branch  of  the  Obi,  in  1604  ;  Yeniseisk  on  the 
Yenisei  in  161 9;  Yakoutsk  in  1632;  Atchinsk  in 
1642  ;  Nertchinsk  on  the  Shilka,  a  branch  of  the  Amur, 
in  1654;  Okhotsk  on  the  sea  of  the  same  name  in 
1638. 

Siberia,  even  to  our  own  times,  has  been  valuable 
mainly  on  account  of  its  immense  extent  and  the  liberty 
that  free  immigrants  have  found  there.  It  may  be 
divided  into  three  divisions  :  in  the  north,  the  toundra^ 
marshy  in  summer,  a  mass  of  ice  in  winter ;  in  the  centre, 
the  ta'tga^  or  forest,  dear  to  the  hunter ;  in  the  south,  the 
cultivated  region,  of  an  area  thrice  that  of  all  France. 
Even  this  last  division,  except  in  the  districts  where  the 
"  black  earth  "  is  found,  is  not  characterized  by  a  fertility 
that  redeems  the  severity  of  a  climate,  extreme  in  its 
summer  heat  as  in  its  winter  cold.  In  the  seventeenth 
century  a  belief  was  current  that  the  region  about  the 
Amur  was,  on  the  contrary,  of  great  fertility,  a  belief 
which  experience  has  shown  to  be  ill-founded.  It  was, 
therefore,  in  this  direction  that  th-e  most  venturesome 
Cossacks  and  the  most  energetic  settlers  hastened.  They 
were  not  disturbed  by  the  fact  that  the  country  belonged 
to   the   Chinese   Emperor.      In    1649,   a   young   officer 


EARLY  CONTESTS  WITH  CHINA.  67 

named  Khabarof,  undertook  to  descend  the  still  unex- 
plored river,  building  forts  at  the  junction  of  the  tribu- 
taries, conquering  rebellious  tribes  of  natives,  and  fight- 
ing troops  of  Manchurian  horsemen  (1649— 1652).  ^^i 
1658,  Pachkof,  governor  of  Yeniseik,  founded  Nert- 
chinsk  on  the  Shilka,  a  branch  of  the  Amur.  Five  years 
later  Albasin  was  founded.  This  was  a  fortress  with 
ramparts  of  wood,  and  in  its  vicinity  there  arose  many 
Russian  villages.  Finally,  the  Chinese,  irritated  at  seeing 
these  adventurers  assume  rulership  over  them,  several 
times  attacked  Albasin  with  armies  of  from  fifteen  to 
twenty  thousand  men ;  but  were  invariably  repulsed. 
Upon  receiving  tidings  of  these  events,  the  court  at 
Moscow  sent  envoys  to  that  of  Pekin  with  a  letter  written 
in  Latin  and  in  Russian.  After  long  deliberation  at 
Nertchinsk  a  treaty  was  signed  in  that  city,  in  1689,  in 
accordance  with  the  terms  of  which  the  heroic  fort  of 
Albasin  was  to  be  razed  ;  and  the  frontier  between  the 
two  empires  was  definitely  fixed  as  it  continued  to  be 
observed  by  both  countries  down  to  the  treaties  of  1858. 
On  their  side,  the  Russians  renounced  further  forcible 
encroachment  and  settlement  on  Chinese  territory  ;  but 
they  did  not  renounce  their  efforts  to  gain  a  foothold  by 
commerce,  religious  mission  work,  and  diplomacy  jn  the 
Middle  Kingdom,  and  even  in  Pekin  itself.  The  Russians 
that  had  been  made  prisoners  at  Albasin,  or  in  battles  at 
other  places,  had  been  taken  to  the  capital  of  the  empire. 
Some  of  them  had  established  themselves  there  as  artisans 


68  RUSSIAN  RESIDENTS  IN  PEKIN. 

or  merchants ;  others  formed  the  Russian  guard  of  the 
"  Son  of  Heaven."  At  Moscow  it  was  known  that  these 
men  were  well  treated  at  Pekin,  but  that  they  had  neither 
church  nor  priest  of  their  religion.  Peter  the  Great 
resolved  to  send  an  embassy  to  Pekin  to  secure  satisfactory 
concessions  on  this  point.  This,  indeed,  was  the  object 
of  a  mission  entrusted  to  Eberhard  Ysbrand,  who  reached 
Pekin  in  1693,  ^^^  there  obtained  what  the  Czar  wished. 
In  1 72 1,  Tsmailof  was  despatched  to  the  Chinese  capital 
to  secure  from  the  Emperor  Kanghi  the  privilege  of 
establishing  there  a  permanent  Russian  legation.  He 
gave  the  Bodgy-Khan  a  letter  from  the  Czar  and  left 
M.  de  Lange  as  charge  d'affaires  \  but  the  latter  almost 
immediately  after  Tsmailof's  departure  was  dismissed  by 
the  Chinese  court.  In  1727,  a  treaty  that  secured 
greater  commercial  privileges  for  the  Russians  was  signed 
at  Kiakhta.  In  1 806,  Golovine,  another  envoy,  was 
sent  to  Pekin  with  a  view  to  obtaining  the  free  navigation 
of  the  Amur  River.  This  mission  failed  ;  nevertheless 
the  position  of  Russia  in  the  Asiatic  East  was  continually 
growing  stronger.  In  1807,  they  had  annexed  the 
peninsula  of  Kamtchatka.  In  1847,  Count  Nicholas 
Muravief,  who  was  to  win  the  surname  of  Amourski, 
became  governor  of  Eastern  Siberia,  and  set  himself  to 
develop  and  strengthen  the  colony.  He  perceived  that 
it  would  have  no  future  if  possession  was  not  secured  of 
the  chief  river  and  the  richest  province  of  the  region, 
that  is,  of  the  Amur  and  of  Manchuria,     The  river  was 


FURTHER  EXPANSION.  69 

Still  so  incompletely  known  that  the  Grand  Chancellor 
Nesselrode  declared  to  the  Emperor  Nicholas  that  its 
outlet  was  inaccessible.  In  1848,  a  Cossack  expedition, 
under  Vaganof,  perished  without  the  escape  of  a  single 
person  to  tell  the  tale.  Two  years  afterwards  Captain 
Nevelskoi  discovered  that  Saghalin  is  really  an  island, 
separated  from  the  mainland  by  the  channel  or  strait  of 
Tartary,  and,  in  the  course  of  his  exploration,  came  upon 
the  mouth  of  the  Amur,  entered  it  in  a  small  boat,  and 
planted  the  Russian  flag  on  its  banks ;  proclaiming  to 
the  natives  that  the  country  belonged  to  the  "  White 
Czar"  at  St.  Petersburg.  The  Grand  Chancellor  was 
terrified  at  Nevelskoi's  audacity  ;  he  already  saw  himself 
at  war  with  China;  he  insisted  that  the  daring  captain's 
action  be  discountenanced,  but  the  Emperor  replied  : 
"  When  Russia's  flag  has  been  raised  anywhere  it  should 
not  be  taken  down."  On  his  part.  Governor  Muravief 
endeavored  to  persuade  the  local  mandarins  that  the  best 
thing  to  do  was  to  leave  the  Russians  alone.  The 
Chinese  demanded  that  negotiations  be  entered  upon 
with  their  Emperor ;  Muravief  thought  that  Pekin  was 
too  far  away  for  that  and  that  Chinese  diplomacy  was 
too  slow.  He  continued  to  act,  therefore,  as  if  the 
country  was  already  a  Russian  province,  and  strengthened 
his  position  by  building  along  the  river  the  forts  Alexan- 
drovsk,  Mikhailovsk,  and  Nicolaievsk, — all  of  these 
baptismal  names  of  the  royal  family.  Petropavlosk,  on 
the  southeast  coast  of  Kamtchatka,  had  been  established 


70  DEMAND  FOR  MANCHURIA. 

in  1 740.  Other  fortresses  arose  at  the  junction  of  the 
several  principal  tributaries  of  the  Amur  River.  "  The 
Amur  will  be  the  death  of  you,"  said  the  Emperor 
Nicholas  jestingly  to  Muravief. 

During  the  Crimean  War  the  Anglo-French  fleet 
blockaded  the  Russian  Pacific  coast,  and  destroyed  a  part 
of  the  military  establishments  and  of  the  infant  marine. 
This  blockade,  by  threatening  to  starve  out  the  colony, 
only  hastened  a  decision  upon  the  part  of  Muravief,  who 
had  need  of  Manchuria  to  furnish  food  for  his  colonists. 
Its  annexation  was  already  an  accomplished  fact,  when, 
in  1857,  Admiral  Putiatin  dropped  anchor  in  the  Gulf  of 
Pechili  and  proposed  to  the  Chinese  Emperor,  in  con- 
sideration of  Russia's  armed  intervention  in  the  Taiping 
rebellion,  the  cession  of  Manchuria.  China's  only  reply 
was  a  vigorous  protest  against  Russian  encroachment. 
War  seemed  imminent  between  the  two  empires.  For- 
tunately for  Russia,  just  at  that  time  came  the  Anglo- 
French  expedition  and  the  march  of  the  allies  upon 
Pekin.  The  Russians  profited  by  this  event  to  complete 
the  annexation  of  the  coveted  territory.  The  Czar  sent 
a  fleet  into  the  Chinese  waters,  and  the  Celestials  did 
not  relish  having  a  third  European  power  to  deal  with. 
By  the  Treaties  of  Aigun  and  Tientsin  in  1858,  they 
granted  to  Russia  the  entire  left  bank  of  the  Amur,  the 
entire  territory  between  that  river  and  the  ocean  as  well 
as  its  tributary  stream,  the  Ossuri,  the  bay  on  which 
there  was,  in  time,  to  rise  the   fortress  of  Vladivostock, 


VLADIVOSTOCK.  7* 

with  its  prophetic  name  (Dominator  of  the  East).  These 
newly  acquired  lands  formed  two  provinces,  the  Amur 
Province  and  the  Maritime  Province.  By  the  Treaty  of 
Pekin,  in  i860,  China  ceded  to  Russia  the  region  adja- 
cent to  the  lakes  Balkash  and  Issik-kul ;  the  boundary  line 
between  Manchuria  and  Siberia  was  re-adjusted,  and  the 
Russians  were  granted  the  right  to  trade  in  all  parts  of 
the  empire.  Fifteen  years  more,  and  Russia  obtained 
from  Japan  the  abandonment  of  the  latter's  rights  over 
Saghalin  in  exchange  for  the  North  Kurile  Isles, 

For  nearly  thirty  years  the  boundary  between  China 
and  Russia  remained  as  agreed  upon  in  the  treaties  of 
1858  and  i860.  But  already  the  commercial  and  polit- 
ical activity  of  the  Russians  was  overstepping  it.  They 
had  established  themselves  in  large  numbers  in  the  cities 
of  Chinese  Manchuria, — in  Kiakhta,  Mukden,  Kirin, 
and  Tsitsihar,  the  residence  of  the  mandarin-governor. 
The  navigation  of  the  Ossuri  and  the  Sungari  Rivers  fell 
wholly  into  their  hands.  The  steamships  of  the  Amur 
Company  put  Russia  in  rapid  communication  with  Japan 
and  San  Francisco.  "Scientific  Missions"  traversed 
China  in  all  directions.  At  Pekin  the  Russian  colony 
acquired  a  continually  greater  importance  and  the  ambas- 
sador of  the  Czar  wielded  more  influence  at  court  than 
the  representatives  of  any  other  European  p<^wer.  His 
open  handed  liberality  won  him  the  favor  of  the  cour- 
tiers, the  mandarins,  and  the  generals.  In  all  the  sea 
and  river  ports,  the  colonies  of  Russian  merchants  mul- 


72  NICHOLAS  II.  AT  PEKIN. 

tiplied,'and  these  seemed  to  live  on  better  terms  with  the 
native  population  than  the  traders  of  other  foreign 
nations.  On  the  arrival  of  the  Czarovitch,  in  1891,  he 
was  honored  with  a  series  of  royal  entertainments. 


COREA. 


The  China-Japan  War — Interference  of  Russia — Conflict 
WITH  Japanese  interests — Russia's  Gain. 

HINA  and  Japan,  "  The  Mid- 
dle Kingdom,"  and  "The 
Land  of  the  Rising  Sun,"  the 
Bogdy-Khan  and  the  Mikado^ 
had  disputed  with  each  other 
for  a  long  time,  the  protector- 
ate of  the  kingdom  of  Corea. 
War  broke  out  between  the 
two  empires  in  the  July  of  1894.  The  Japanese  troops, 
drilled  and  equipped  in  the  European  manner,  were 
everywhere  victorious.  Their  warships,  built  in  the  best 
shipyards  of  Europe,  sank  the  Chinese  vessels.  The 
Japanese  occupied  all  Corea,  stormed  and  captured  Port 
Arthur,  conquered  a  part  of  Chinese  Manchuria,  captured 
Wei-hai-Wei,  threatened  Pekin,  and  finally  imposed  upon 
China  the  Treaty  of  Shimonosaki,  April  17,  1895. 
China  was  compelled  to  renounce  all  her  claims  with 
respect  to  Corea ;  to  give  to  her  conquerors  the  Island 
of  Formosa,  the  Pescadores,  the  peninsula  of  Liao-tung, 

(73) 


74  JAPAN'S  SUCCESS. 

with  Port  Arthur  and  Talien-Wan,  to  open  five  new 
ports,  including  Pekin,  to  their  commerce  ;  to  grant  them 
the  right  to  open  manufacturing  establishments  in  the 
empire  ;  and  to  pay  a  war  indemnity  of  seven  hundred 
and  fifty  millions.' 

The  success  of  the  Japanese  had  been  so  rapid  that 
all  the  European  powers  were  surprised  at  this  sudden 
revelation  of  such  a  military  and  naval  strength  in  the 
hands  of  the  Aiikado.  England,  at  first  hostile  and 
malevolent,  hastened  to  show  more  friendly  feelings  for 
the  conqueror  ;  the  United  States  concluded  a  commercial 
treaty  with  the  Japanese  government ;  and  all  the  plans 
that  Russia  had  formed  for  supremacy  in  the  Far  East 
were  threatened  with  failure.  She  could  not  allow 
either  Wei-hai-Wei  or  the  peninsula  of  Liao-tung,  with 
the  harbors  that  she  had  so  long  coveted,  to  remain  in 
the  hands  of  the  Japanese.  Should  she  do  so,  she  would 
see  herself  relegated  to  the  ports  of  Siberia  and  Northern 
Manchuria,  closed  by  ice  for  a  part  of  the  year,  and  her 
hope  of  unfolding  her  colors  in  the  seas  of  the  Far  East 
taken  from  her.  She  could  not  permit  that  the  influence 
of  triumphant  Japan  should  be  substituted  at  Pekin  for 
her  own  influence,  already  dating  back  a  century  or 
more.  It  was  necessary,  at  any  cost,  even  should  it 
mean  war,  to  prevent  the  provisions  of  the  Shimonosaki 
Treaty  being  carried  out.     She  was  successful  in  enlisting 

(i)  Vladimir,  The  China-Japan  IVar,  compiled  from  "Japanese, 
Chinese,  and  Foreign  Sources,  London,  Sampson  Low,  1896. 


RUSSIAN  INTERVENTION.  75 

the  cooperation  of  two  states  which,  although  antagonis- 
tic to  each  other,  had  reasons  for  keeping  the  good-will 
of  Russia.  These  three  powers  : — Russia,  France,  and 
Germany, — formed  what  might  be  called  "  A  Triple 
Alliance  of  the  Far  East."  They  forwarded  to  the  court 
at  Tokyo  some  "  friendly  advice  "  regarding  the  giving 
up  of  claims  that  might  bring  about  a  general  conflagra- 
tion. It  was  hard  for  Japan  to  renounce  the  Liao-tung 
peninsula,  with  its  harbors  of  Port  Arthur,  Talien-Wan, 
and  Wei-hai-Wei,  that  had  been  conquered  at  the  price 
of  its  blood,  and  by  such  brilliant  victories ;  but  the 
Japanese  armies  were  on  the  Chinese  mainland ;  the 
three  powers  were  masters  of  the  sea;  and  thus  the  island 
empire  was  left  almost  without  defence.  The  three 
protesting  powers  had  the  advantage.  Russia,  in  the 
deliberations  over  the  revision  of  the  treaty,  showed  such 
passionate  msistence  that  twice.  May  5,  and  May  8, 
Admiral  Tyrtof  made  all  preparations  to  meet  the  Japanese 
fleet,  which  probably  would  have  gone  to  the  bottom. 
By  the  Treaty  of  Tokyo,  May  8,  1895,  Japan  agreed 
to  give  up  the  Liao-tung  and  Wei-hai-Wei ;  to  be  satisfied 
with  Formosa  and  the  Pescadores,  positions  of  the  utmost 
importance  in  the  Pacific  ;  and  to  receive  the  war  indem- 
nity and  certain  commercial  privileges. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  Russia  had  just  inflicted  upon 
Japan  the  treatment  that  she  herself  had  received  from 
the  European  powers,  after  so  many  splendid  victories 
over    the    Turks.       It    was    under    the    pressure    of   a 


76  JAPAN'S  LOSS— RUSSIA'S  GAIN. 

"  European  Concert  "  that  Japan  lost  the  most  precious 
fruits  of  her  success  against  the  Chinese,  just  as  the 
Russian  conquerors  of  the  Ottomans  had  lost  theirs. 
Russia  set  up  against  Japan  the  principle  of  the  integrity 
of  the  Chinese  Empire  in  exactly  the  same  way  that 
the  powers  had  imposed  upon  her  the  principle  of  the 
preservation  of  the  Turkish  Empire.  The  Treaty  of 
Tokyo  in  1895,  modified  the  Treaty  of  Shimonosaki 
as  completely  as  had  the  Treaty  of  Berlin  modified 
that  of  San  Stefano  in  1878.  Just  as  Russia,  in  1878, 
had  had  the  mortification  of  seeing  her  political  foes, 
Austria  and  England,  enrich  themselves  with  the  spoils 
of  that  very  Turkish  Empire  that  they  pretended  to 
protect  against  her  covetousness,  laying  their  hands, 
the  one  on  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  and  the  other  upon 
the  island  of  Cyprus  ;  so  Japan  had  soon  the  mortification 
of  seeing  Russia  violate,  for  her  own  profit,  that  very 
principle  of  the  continental  integrity  of  the  Chinese 
Empire  that  she  had  set  up  against  Japanese  ambition. 


CHINA. 

Russian     Concessions — Port     Arthur — Railways — Loans — 
CoREA — Germany — Great  Britain — The  United  States. 


NGLAND  and  France,  the  for- 
mer in  particular,  obtained 
from  China  numerous  import- 
ant concessions' ;  but  of  more 
value  were  those  that  Russia 
secured.  By  the  convention 
of  June,  1895,  China  con- 
tracted with  her,  through  the 
intermediary  of  the  Russo-Chinese  bank,  recently  estab- 
lished at  St.  Petersburg,  and  under  the  direction  of  Count 
Oukhtomski,  whose  Oriental  policy  we  know,  a  loan  of 
four  hundred  million  francs  at  four  per  cent,  payable  in 
thirty-six  years.  On  October  25,  1896,  this  same  bank 
made  another  agreement  with  the  Pekin  government. 
This    agreement,    ratified    by    the    Czar,    became,    on 


(i)  R.  I.  Pinon  et  J.  de  Marcillac,  La  Chine  qui  s'' owvre,  Paris, 
1900.      Pierre  Leroy-Beaulieu,    La  r'eno-uation  de  I'' Asie :   Siberie, 
Chine,   Japan,   Paris,    1900.       Chas.    Beresford,    The  Break-up  of 
China,  London  and  New  Yorlc,  1899. 

(77) 


78  RUSSIA  OBTAINS  PORT  ARTHUR. 

December  26,  the  Treaty  of  St.  Petersburg.  It  gives 
the  Eastern  Chinese  Railroad  Company  the  right  to 
build  a  road  through  Chinese  Manchuria,  making  it  a 
branch  line  of  the  Russian  Trans-Siberian  Railroad  ;  to 
develop  coal  and  other  mines  in  the  territory  traversed 
by  the  road,  and  to  devote  itself  to  all  other  industrial 
and  commercial  enterprises.  The  stock  of  the  company 
can  be  held  by  Chinese  and  Russians  only,  which  means 
that  it  will  fall  almost  exclusively  into  the  hands  of  the 
Russians.  A  special  clause  authorized  the  Czar  to  station 
in  Manchuria  both  infantry  and  cavalry  for  the  protection 
of  the  railroad.  This  was  the  disguised  annexation  of  all 
the  part  of  the  vast  province  that  had  not  already  been 
ceded  to  Russia  in  1858  and  i860.  Furthermore, 
China  leased  to  Russia  for  fifteen  years  a  harbor  in  the 
province  of  Shantung,  and  finally,  Russian  war-ships 
were  given  the  privileges  of  the  two  harbors  of  Liao-tung 
peninsula.  Port  Arthur  and  Talien-Wan. 

March  27,  1898,  there  was  formulated  a  new  agree- 
ment between  the  two  countries.  Port  Arthur  and 
Talien-Wan  and  all  their  dependencies  were  leased  to 
Russia  for  a  term  of  twenty-five  years.  With  this  was 
granted  the  privilege  of  building  through  the  Liao-tung 
peninsula  a  railroad  from  Vladivostock  to  Port  Arthur, 
which  is  to  be  merely  another  branch  of  the  Trans- 
Siberian  road. 

Nor  is  this  all.  According  to  a  still  more  recent 
agreement,  a  Russian  railroad  is  to  be  built  from  Mukden 


RAILWAYS.  79 

in  Manchuria  to  Pekin.  Another  Russian  company  is 
to  construct  a  system  of  Chinese  railroads,  the  three 
principal  lines  of  which,  setting  out  from  Pekin,  are  to 
traverse,  the  first  two,  the  provinces  of  Shansi  and  Ho- 
nan,  the  third,  the  province  of  Hupe  and  to  terminate  at 
Hankow  on  the  Yang-tse-kiang.  Against  this  third 
railroad,  England  made  a  vigorous  protest.  In  her 
treaties  with  China,  she  had  secured  for  herself  the  build- 
ing of  railroads  and  the  commerce  of  the  valley  of  the 
Yang-tse,  and  here  the  Russians  were  coming  to  cut  off 
her  railroads,  and  in  the  very  heart  of  China  to  draw  off 
the  merchandise  that  she  was  counting  upon  to  export 
by  sea,  and  which  was  now  likely  to  be  carried  by  the 
Trans-Siberian  line.  After  having  secured  the  defeat  at 
Pekin  of  the  propositions  of  a  Franco-Russian  syndicate, 
she  encouraged  two  Chinese  of  high  rank  to  apply  for  a 
contract  to  build  the  debated  railroad.  They  found 
themselves  unable  to  raise  the  necessary  funds,  and  it 
was  then  that  Russia,  thanks  to  the  energy  of  Count 
Oukhtomski,  had  the  franchise  transferred  to  a  Franco- 
Belgian  company. 

Nevertheless,  in  November,  1897,  Russia  had  either 
not  the  ability  or  the  wish  to  prevent  the  Germans  from 
landing  in  the  bay  of  Kiao-chow,  which  she  seemed  to 
have  reserved  for  herself,  or  from  securing  a  lease  of  it 
for  ninety-nine  years.  Neither  could  she  hinder  the 
English,  incensed  at  the  action  of  the  Germans,  from 
obtaining,  in  April,  1898,  a  lease  of  the  harbor  and  bay 


8o  RUSSIA'S  SUPERIORITY. 

of  Wei-hai-Wei,  evacuated  by  the  Japanese.  It  thus 
happens  that  in  the  Pechili  Gulf,  from  which  Pekin 
receives  the  greater  part  of  its  supplies,  three  European 
powers  occupy  places  very  near  one  another ;  the  Russians 
at  Port  Arthur  and  Talien-Wan,  the  Germans  at  Kiao- 
chow,  and  the  English  at  Wei-hai-Wei.  The  Pechili 
Gulf  has  become  another  Mediterranean,  on  whose 
shores  rival  Asiatic  interests  continue  the  rivalries  of 
Europe.  The  position  of  Russia  is  much  the  strongest. 
She  commands  Pekin,  not  merely  by  sea,  but  by  all  the 
overland  highways.  She  alone  of  the  three  rival  powers 
in  the  Pechili  Gulf  possesses  a  vast  continental  base  of 
operations.  She  fronts  China  along  a  boundary  line 
several  thousand  miles  in  length  ;  she  embraces  and 
penetrates  China ;  and  she  alone  by  her  railroads,  the 
Trans-Siberian,  the  Trans-iManchurian,  and  the  Trans- 
Chinese,  will  be  able  to  pour  into  the  very  centre  of 
China  and  into  its  capital  a  great  European  army. 
Recently  in  the  revolution  of  the  palace,  which  took 
place  in  Pekin  in  September,  1898,  it  was  manifest  to 
what  degree  the  influence  of  the  Russian  legation  there 
was  preponderant.  The  young  Emperor,  Kwang-Su, 
supported  by  Japan,  and  perhaps  also  by  England, 
endeavored  to  shake  off  the  tutelage  of  the  Empress- 
Dowager,  Tsu-Hsi,  and  of  the  viceroy,  Li-Hung-Chang, 
the  friend  of  the  Russians,  in  order  that  he  might 
inaugurate  an  era  of  reforms.  The  plot  was  discovered, 
the  accomplices  of  the  Emperor  were  executed  or  ban- 


CORE  A.  8 1 

ished,  and  the  Empress-Dowager  reassumed  full  power. 
In  Corea,  Russia  has  taken  the  place  of  China  in  the 
long-standing  rivalry  that  the  latter  has  carried  on  with 
Japan.  At  Seoul,  in  the  palace  of  King  Li-hui,  it  is  the 
Russian  faction  which,  as  a  conservative  party,  has  taken 
the  place  of  the  old  Chinese  faction  in  opposition  to  the 
Japanese  faction,  which  constitutes  the  progressive  party 
of  Corea.  Japan  and  Russia  dispute  with  each  other 
not  only  political  influences,  but  commercial  exploitation. 
Russia  might  employ  force,  but  she  fears  lest  Japan,  the 
Great  Britain  of  the  Far  East,  may  throw  herself  into  an 
alliance  with  the  Great  Britain  of  Europe.  Therefore, 
Russia  now  openly  opposes  Japan,  and  now  again  craftily 
manipulates  her.  In  spite  of  the  keenness  of  the  conten- 
tion, she  has  had  the  shrewdness  never  to  push  matters 
to  a  rupture.  In  a  series  of  agreements,  dated  May  14, 
1896,  February  24,  1897,  April  25,  1898,  respectively, 
the  two  rivals  have  attempted  to  define  the  conditions  of 
this  sort  of  condominium  and  to  establish  an  equitable 
division  of  commercial  advantages,  of  mail  and  telegraph 
monopoly,  and  of  police  force.  In  this  division,  however, 
Russia  seems  to  have  secured  the  lion's  share.  She 
possesses  in  Corea  a  system  of  telegraph  lines  which  is 
annexed  to  her  Siberian  lines ;  she  has  managed  to  have 
the  financial  administration  of  the  kingdom  entrusted  to 
Russians,  and  has  succeeded  in  having  King  Li-hui  issue 
an  edict  that  the  future  railways  of  Corea  shall  be  of  the 
same  guage  as  those  of  Siberia. 


'82  POLITICAL  PROBLEMS. 

With  France  in  Tonquin  and  the  region  round  about ; 
Germany  in  Kiao-chow  ;  England  at  Wei-hai-Wei,  on 
the  Blue  River,  and  in  the  peninsula  of  Kelung  before 
Hong-Kong;  with  Russia  throughout  all  north  China;  the 
Japanese  in  Corea,in  Formosa,  and  the  Pescadores,  and  the 
United  States  in  the  Philippines, — it  can  be  seen  that  the 
political  problems  of  the  Far  East  have  become  as  com- 
plicated as  the  like  problems  have  ever  been  in  Europe  or 
America. 


THE  MEANS  AND   METHODS    OF    RUSSIAN 
EXPANSION. 

Fruits  of  Diplomacy — Absolutism  of  Russian  Govern- 
ment— An  Enlightened  Despotism — Russian  Colonists — 
Race  Characteristics  —  Religion  —  Population  —  Franco- 
Russian  Alliance — From  the  Baltic  to  the  Pacific. 

E  have  followed  Russia  in  all 
the  directions  that  her  policy 
of  expansion  has  carried  her. 
It  now  remains  for  us  to  study 
the  means  that  she  has  em- 
ployed, especially  in  what  con- 
cerns her  expansion  in  the  East. 
The  essential  characteristic  that  distinguishes  her 
Oriental  from  her  Western  policy  is,  that,  while  nearly 
all  the  progress  she  has  made  in  Europe  has  been  either 
the  cause  or  the  result  of  bloody  wars  like  those  of  the 
Czars  of  Moscow  against  Poland,  of  Peter  the  Great 
against  Charles  XII.,  of  Catherine  II.  and  Alexander  II. 
against  the  Ottomans,  of  Paul  I.  against  the  French 
Republic,  of  Alexander  I.  against  Napoleon,  and  of 
Nicholas  I.  against  the  Allies  in  the  Crimea,  her  Oriental 
expansions  have  never  brought  her  into  war  with  a  power 
of  the  first  magnitude,  not  even  with  China.  However 
bellicose  Russia  may  have  shown  herself  in  Europe,  in 

(83) 


84  FRUITS  OF  DIPLOMACY. 

Asia  she  has  exhibited  a  prudence  wholly  Oriental.  A 
score  of  times  it  has  seemed  that  she  was  on  the  brink 
of  a  mighty  war  with  Great  Britain  over  the  frontiers  of 
India  ;  with  China  over  Albasin,  Kuldja,  or  Manchuria  ; 
and  with  Japan  over  Liao-tung  and  Corea.  Some  sort 
of  an  agreement  has  always  come  in  time  to  ward  off  an 
open  rupture,  as  in  1872,  1885,  1887,  and  1895,  with 
Great  Britain ;  and  as  at  Nertchinsk,  at  Aigun,  at 
Tientsin,  and  at  Pekin  with  China.  In  1871,  war  with 
the  latter  seemed  imminent  with  respect  to  the  Kuldja 
question,  but,  rather  than  proceed  to  extreme  measures, 
Russia  preferred  to  abandon  a  part  of  her  conquest.  In 
these  agreements  Russia,  it  is  found,  has  generally  the  bet- 
ter part  of  the  bargain.  She  understands  how  to  utilize  the 
amour-propre  of  her  adversaries.  Thus,  she  helped  the 
Chinese  "  to  save  their  face,"  for  example,  by  inducing 
them  to  lease  for  twenty-five  or  ninety-nine  years  what 
they  would  obstinately  have  refused  to  cede  definitely. 
Thanks  to  this  expedient,  it  appeared  to  the  Chinese 
that  the  dignity  and  integrity  of  their  empire  would 
remain  inviolate.  England  also  has  grown  accustomed 
to  allowing  herself  "  to  save  her  face,"  and  to  be  put  to 
sleep  by  the  mesmeric  passes,  energetic,  and  at  the  same 
time,  caressing  of  Russian  diplomacy.  She  allows  herself 
to  see  in  the  "  explanations "  brought  to  London,  the 
proof  that  some  bold  Cossack  raid,  some  thorough  lesson 
administered  to  her  Afghan  clients,  is  the  result  of  an 
"  error,"    a    "  misunderstanding."     A  company   of  six 


FRUITS  OF  DIPLOMACY.  85 

hundred  soldiers  is  almost  always  a  "  scientific  expedition." 
The  English  minister,  in  order  not  to  stir  up  strife,  allows 
himself  to  yield,  and  hands  over  to  his  successor  the  task 
of  disentangling  the  knot.  This  successor  is  careful  not 
to  meddle  with  what  he  himself  was  not  mixed  up  in, 
and  what  the  jingoes  and  London  cockneys  have  already 
forgotten ;  and  so  what  the  Russians  have  skillfully 
acquired  remains  permanently  in  their  possession.  If 
the  occasion  demands  it,  they  will  declare  that  they  did 
not  intend  to  conquer  Bokhara  ;  but  have  they  proved 
that  they  have  not  made  a  vassal  state  of  it,  something 
that  will  be  more  useful  to  them  than  an  annexed  pro- 
vince ?  They  never  intended  to  advance  to  Merv  ;  but 
if  the  people  of  Merv  of  their  own  accord  came  to  them, 
would  it  be  a  wise  policy  to  reject  a  "  voluntary  "  sub- 
mission ?  And  thus,  slowly,  silently,  without  excessive 
cracking  of  her  whip,  Russian  supremacy,  in  her  well- 
oiled  car  of  progress,  has  been  moving  on  through  all 
Central  Asia. 

Russia  is  the  only  European  power  which  has  an 
absolute  government.  Its  autocratic  feature,  so  fiercely 
assailed  upon  the  accession  of  Nicholas  I.  by  the  "  Con- 
stitutionals," or  "Republicans,"  of  1825,  and  under 
Alexander  II.  by  the  Nihilist  conspiracies,  seems  to  have 
taken  on  a  new  life  in  the  estimation  of  the  Russian 
people,  because,  according  to  the  expression  of  Prince 
Oukhtomski,  it  is  the  necessary  condition  of  the  greatness 
of  their  nation  and  of  her  "  supernatural "   and  provi- 


86  THE  RUSSIAN  GOVERNMENT. 

dential  mission  in  Asia.  If  the  foundation  of  the  govern- 
ment remains  autocratic,  this  autocracy,  is  at  least 
more  sincerely  an  "  enlightened  despotism  "  than  was 
the  absolutism  of  the  eighteenth  century,  a  despotism 
thoughtful  of  the  economic  interests  and  the  well-being 
of  the  people,  blending  its  ambitions  with  the  legitimate 
aspirations  of  the  nation.  It  has  borrowed  from  the 
West  municipal  or  provincial  self-government,  but  not 
the  parliamentary,  not  even  the  representative  regimen. 
In  Russia  there  is  no  minister  responsible  to  legislative 
bodies,  where  changeable  majorities  successively  displace 
one  another ;  but  ministers  having  the  confidence  of  the 
sovereign  continue  in  office  for  a  long  time,  in  such 
manner  that  from  1815  to  1882  Russia  had  only  two 
ministers  of  foreign  affairs,  Nesselrode  and  Gortchakof, 
and  since  the  latter  date  there  have  been  only  three,  De 
Giers,  Lobanof,  and  Muravief.  How  many  have  been 
those  that  have  followed  one  another  during  these  past 
eighty-five  years  in  France,  England,  and  even  the 
United  States  !  This  permanency  in  office  allows 
continuity  of  the  same  political  views  and  constancy 
in  realizing  them.  No  parliament,  therefore,  no  ques- 
tionings, no  blue  or  yellow  books.  A  restricted  liberty 
of  the  press  closes  with  respect  the  indiscreet  lips  of 
reporters  and  interviewers.  Hence  secrecy  in  both  plan- 
ning and  executing  is  possible.  There  is  no  need  of 
throwing  dust  in  the  eyes  of  parliaments,  of  the  news- 
papers, and   of  the   people  ;   nor  is   there   any    need  of 


AN  ENLIGHTENED  DESPOTISM.  87 

brag,  optimistic  proclamations,  and  of  oratorical  heroics. 
Great  conquests  can  be  accomplished  silently. 

This  form  of  government,  though  it  may  appear  as 
archaic  as  the  despotism  of  Nebuchadnezzar  or  of  the 
Grand  Turk,  does  not  exclude  the  use  of  the  most 
modern  appliances  and  scientific  methods  over  which 
free  peoples  pride  themselves  :  railroads,  telegraphs,  tele- 
phones, improved  cannon  and  rifles,  battleships  and 
cruisers  of  the  latest  pattern,  a  thorough  knowledge  of 
history,  of  ethnography,  and  of  all  forms  of  human  speech, 
from  those  of  Finland  to  those  of  Kamtchatka.  It  does 
not  exclude  the  system  of  military  organization  in 
vigorous  operation  by  the  powerful  and  enlightened 
nations  of  France  and  Germany,  nor  yet  the  art  of 
securing  from  the  people  the  maximum  of  mihtary 
power. 

Russia  has  a  regular  army  like  France  and  Germany, 
national  militia  like  Switzerland,  and  irregular  troops  like 
those  of  the  Shah  of  Persia  and  the  Emperor  of  China. 
These  irregulars  date  back  to  the  beginning  of  Russian  ex- 
pansion. The  Czars  of  Moscow  had  their  Cossacks  of  the 
Dnieper,  of  the  Don,  of  the  Volga,  and  of  the  Ural.  In 
proportion  as  conquest  succeeded  conquest,  the  soldier 
class  of  the  subdued  peoples  were  amalgamated  with  the 
Russians  in  the  "  Cossack  armies  "  of  the  Tefek,  of  the 
Kuban,  of  the  Caucasus,  and  of  Turkestan.  There  are 
to-day  Cossacks  of  the  Trans-Baikal,  of  the  Pamirs,  and 
of  the  Amur.     For  hundreds  and  thousands  of  kilometres, 


88  RUSSIAN  COLONISTS. 

they  constitute  the  grand  guard  of  the  regular  army,  the 
mobile  curtain  of  light  cavalry  that  will  screen  its  move- 
ments, "  free  lances,"  for  whose  too  audacious  encroach- 
ment and  too  bold  raids,  it  will  be  possible  to  disavow 
all  responsibility. 

Behind  these,  like  another  advance  guard,  come  the 
merchants,  adventurers  also,  jnerchant  adventurers^  as  the 
English  of  the  fifteenth  century  said.  Behind  these, 
again,  sally  forth  the  colonists  in  search  of  cheap  land, 
and  who,  following  the  course  of  the  rivers  and  streams, 
at  times  venturing  into  the  jungles,  found  villages  over 
which  will  soon  rise  the  humble  bell-tower  of  a  church. 
All  these  people,  Cossacks,  officers,  and  soldiers  of  the 
regular  army,  merchants,  colonists,  and  even  the  tchino- 
vniks^  or  officials,  possess  to  a  degree  not  met  with  in 
any  other  European  nation,  the  gift  of  adaptation  to  a 
new  climate  and  environment,  and  the  gift  of  assimi- 
lating native  races  or  of  becoming  assimilated  with  them. 
The  peasant  of  European  Russia,  very  much  mixed, 
especially  in  the  East,  with  Finnish  or  Turkish  blood  and 
characteristics,  does  not  differ  essentially  from  the  Ostiak 
and  the  Vogul  of  Western  Siberia.  These,  in  turn, 
show  no  marked  difference  from  the  Turkish  population 
of  Eastern  Siberia,  such  as  the  Yakuts.  From  these  to 
the  Mongolian  races,  such  as  the  Tunguses,  the  Buriats, 
and  the  Manchus,  and  from  these  to  the  Chinese  popula- 
tion, there  is  scarcely  any  noticeable  transition.  There  was 
a  time  when  from  the  Dnieper  to  the  Pacific,  all  obeyed 


RUSSIAN  COLONISTS.  89 

the  same  master,  the  Grand  Khan,  "  the  Son  of  Heaven," 
whose  heir  to-day  is  the  "White  Czar."  From  the 
Dnieper  to  the  Pacific  extends  the  same  plain,  are  found 
the  same  climate  and  the  same  soil,  barren  steppes  alter- 
nating with  fertile  mould  ;  the  same  manner  of  life,  of 
dwelling,  and  of  dress  ;  the  same  endurance  of  extreme 
cold,  excessive  heat,  privations,  fatigue,  long  journeys, 
and  a  half-nomadic  existence ;  and  the  same  tendency  to 
Oriental  fatalism,  which  the  orthodox  term  Christian 
resignation.  And  thus,  as  Elisee  Reclus  remarks,  the 
Yakuts  easily  become  Russians  and  the  Russians  as 
easily  become  Yakuts,  and  both  Russians  and  natives 
possess  the  same  readiness  in  acquiring  the  language  of 
the  foreigner. 

Does  not  the  difference  in  religion  constitute  a  barrier 
between  them  r  The  Russian  peasant  with  his  rudiment- 
ary faith,  to  which,  nevertheless,  he  holds  with  all  his 
heart,  and  even  the  pope^  or  parish  priest,  with  his  vaguely 
uncertain  theology  and  his  ignorance,  are  free  from  all 
intolerance.  Any  form  of  the  Christian  religion,  whatever 
value  it  may  have,  although  it  clashes  with  the  still  less 
highly  developed  beliefs  of  the  Mohammedan  peoples, 
makes  its  way  among  tribes  that  are  pagan,  Shamanist, 
Fetichist,  or  vaguelv  Buddhist.  Between  the  Russians  and 
the  pagans  there  is  established  a  oneness  of  faith  or  super- 
stition. There  is  no  question  of  complicated  dogmas  devised 
by  the  subtle  brains  of  Alexandria  or  of  Byzantium. 
The  untutored  Siberians   do   not   fall  into  controversies 


90  RUSSIAN  RELIGIONS. 

over  the  mystery  of  the  Trinity,  the  twofold  nature  of 
the  Redeemer,  or  transubstantiation.  The  idea  of  God 
is  too  lofty  for  these  coarse  minds,  but  they  all  agree  in 
placing  on  the  summit  of  their  Pantheon  Saint  Nicholas, 
the  Thaumaturgist,  and  above  him,  beneath  him,  or  equal 
with  him,  Christ  and  the  Virgin.  Beneath  these  come 
saints,  Christian  or  with  a  physiognomy  that  may  be 
pagan.  Buddhistic,  and  at  times  Mohammedan.  And  all 
this  multiform  worship  is  in  full  harmony  with  the 
primitive  cult  of  springs  and  of  certain  venerable  trees, 
with  the  belief  in  demons  of  the  forests  and  river  sprites, 
and  with  the  custom  of  wearing  certain  amulets  that  the 
orthodox  priest,  the  Shamanist  sorcerer,  or  the  Hadji 
returned  from  Mecca,  may  furnish.  What  more  is 
necessary  in  order  to  be,  in  this  life,  successful  on  the 
farm,  or  in  fishing,  or  in  hunting,  or  in  war,  and,  in  the 
next,  to  be  certain  of  salvation  ?  The  Tunguse,  the 
Buriat,  the  Vogul,  and  the  Ostialc,  who  firmly  believe  in 
Saint  Nicholas,  have  already  become,  or  are  in  the  pro- 
cess of  becoming,  Russian.  Are  not  the  Tchuvashi,  the 
Mordva,  and  the  A'leshtcheraks  all  children  of  the  same 
father,  that  is,  subjects  of  the  same  Czar  ?  Though 
they  may  be  Mohammedans,  do  they  not  still  believe  in 
the  virtue  of  certain  magical  words  uttered  by  the  ortho- 
dox priest,  the  efficacy  of  the  holy  waters  in  driving 
away  Cheitan  (Satan)  and  evil  Djinns,  in  the  protection 
that  Saint  Blaise,  the  old-time  god,  Valoss,  of  the  Rus- 
sians, extends  over  their  flocks,  and  in  the  cures  wrought 


FREEDOM  FROM  RACE  PREJUDICE.  91 

in  the  name  of  Saint  Cosme  or  in  that  of  Saint  Damian, 
those  heavenly  physicians,  who  cure  their  adherents  with- 
out requiring  remuneration  ? 

Those  two  scourges,  journalism  and  theology,  being 
almost  unknown  in  the  Asiatic  Empire  of  the  Czar,  one 
can  live  there  in  a  happy  confusion  of  things.  Politics 
does  not  create  any  differences  among  men,  and  religion 
scarcely  any.  There  is  no  time  to  reflect  and  subtilize 
upon  the  more  or  less  brown  or  yellow  color  of  the  face, 
the  more  or  less  turned-up  shape  of  the  nose,  the  more 
or  less  slant  of  the  eyes,  or  the  more  or  less  prominence 
of  the  cheeks.  In  no  degree  of  the  social  scale  is  there 
known  the  prejudice  "  of  the  skin,"  so  pronounced 
among  the  English  and  Americans,  and  noticeable,  but 
to  much  less  extent,  among  the  French,  Portuguese,  and 
Spanish  colonists.  Russian  colonization  is  not  destructive 
of  aboriginal  races  ;  it  does  not  exterminate  them,  it 
absorbs  them.  Marriages,  legal  or  otherwise,  are  frequent 
between  the  conquerors  and  the  conquered.  Already, 
in  the  days  of  Ivan  the  Terrible,  Tartar  Khans  became 
Russian  princes.  To  her  subjects  of  brown  or  of  saffron 
complexion,  of  Buddhist  or  of  Mohammedan  religion, 
Russia  has  always  shown  more  liberality  than  France  has 
to  her  Algerian  subjects.  In  Algeria  it  has  become 
difficult  for  an  Arab  or  a  Berber  to  rise  above\the  grade 
of  captain,  but  majors,  colonels,  and  even  generals  of 
Turkish  or  Circassian  race,  and  even  of  the  Mohammedan 
religion,  are  numerous  in  the  Asiatic  armies  of  the 
«  White  Czar." 


92  POPULATION. 

The  Russians  of  Europe  are  fully  able  of  themselves 
to  people  their  Asiatic  colonies  without  having  to  assimi- 
late the  natives,  and  without  the  assistance  of  foreign 
immigration.  Russia  is  fortunate  in  that  her  colonies 
are  only  a  prolongation  of  her  own  territories.  To 
become  a  colonist,  there  is  no  ocean  to  cross,  no  steam- 
boat fare  to  pay.  The  poorest  peasant,  a  staff  in  his 
hand,  an  axe  at  his  belt,  his  boots  slung  from  a  cord  over 
his  shoulder,  can  pass  from  one  halting-place  to  another, 
until  he  reaches  the  ends  of  the  empire.  Moreover, 
the  population  of  Russia,  by  its  own  birth  rate,  increases, 
in  spite  of  insufficient  medical  care  at  childbirth,  with  a 
rapidity  unknown  to  any  other  nation  of  European  blood, 
excepting,  perhaps,  the  Canadian  French.  In  187S— 79, 
the  subjects  of  the  Czar  numbered  ninety-six  millions,  in 
1899  they  reached  one  hundred  and  twenty-nine  millions, 
an  increase  in  twenty  years  of  thirty-three  millions,  a 
number  almost  equal  to  the  population  of  the  kingdom 
of  Italy,  or  an  annual  increase  of  about  one  million  six 
hundred  thousand  souls,  a  number  that  about  equals  the 
present  population  of  North  Carolina  or  Alabama.  With 
such  a  treasury  of  men  to  draw  from,  neither  military 
power  nor  colonial  strength  will  be  lacking.  In  Siberia, 
before  1895,  the  increase  of  population  by  immigration 
alone  was  only  about  ninety-two  thousand  per  year. 
Since  the  suppression  of  penal  transportation,  especially 
since  the  construction  of  the  Trans-Siberian  railroad, 
immigration  has  brought  in  two  hundred  thousand  annu- 


THE  FRANCO-RUSSIAN  ALLIANCE.  93 

ally.  The  population  of  Siberia  must  by  this  time  have 
reached  the  figure  of  seven  millions.  Of  this  number  at 
least  six  millions  are  Russians.  This,  however,  is  one 
person  for  each  square  kilometre  of  territory,  so  that 
neither  is  there  any  lack  of  land. 

For  a  long  time  the  Russian  sovereign  needed  two 
things  to  enable  him  to  boldly  plunge  into  the  depths  of 
Asia.  First,  he  lacked  the  assurance  that  England  or 
the  German  powers  would  not  be  able  to  foment  on  his 
European  frontiers  one  of  those  coalitions  like  those 
that  resulted  in  the  Crimean  War  or  in  the  revision  of 
the  Treaty  of  San  Stefano ;  secondly,  he  lacked  "  the 
sinews  of  war,"  or,  as  the  English  phraseology  is,  "  the 
Cavalry  of  Saint  George."  The  alliance  with  France, 
outlined  at  Kronstadt  in  1891,  proclaimed  at  Paris  in 
1896,  and  at  St.  Petersburg  in  1897,  ^^^  given  the 
Czar  the  two  things  that  were  wanting.  It  assures  the 
safety  of  the  European  frontiers  against  any  effort  of  the 
Triple  Alliance.  In  the  Far  East,  in  1895,  we  have 
seen  how,  at  the  same  time,  France  and  Germany  took 
in  hand  the  interests  of  Russia  against  Japanese  ambition 
and  British  hostility.  The  Germany  of  Bismarck  at- 
tempted to  ruin  Russia's  credit  in  the  Berlin  exchange 
and  in  the  European  market.  France  threw  open  her 
market  and  her  credit  to  Russia,  and  either  in  France,  or 
thanks  to  her,  the  Czar,  within  a  few  years,  has  been 
able  to  borrow  several  milliards.  This  has  enabled  him 
to  strengthen  his  army,  put  a  powerful  navy  afloat,  con- 


94  THE  TRANS-SIBERIAN. 

sent  to  large  loans  to  China  and  Persia,  complete  his 
European  railroad  system,  and  push  forward  the  work 
upon  the  Trans-Caucasus,  the  Trans-Siberian,  the  Trans- 
Manchurian,  and  the  Trans-Chinese  railroads. 

The  results  of  the  daring  raids  through  Turkestan,  in 
the  direction  of  the  Persian  Gulf  and  of  Afghanistan, 
and  towards  the  Amur  and  the  Japan  Sea,  are  now  con- 
solidated by  a  wholly  modern  outfit  of  war  and  travel. 
In  Turkestan,  the  ancient  capitals  of  Tamerlane,  the 
fortresses  conquered  by  the  heroism  of  the  Perovskis,  the 
Tchernaiefs  and  of  the  Skobelefs,  all  of  which  called  for  so 
much  skill  and  careful  manipulation  on  the  part  of 
Russian  diplomacy,  are  to-day  railroad  stations.  There 
are  dining-room  stations  at  Merv,  Bokhara,  Samarkand, 
Kokhand,  Andijan,  Tashkend,  etc.,  and  the  Russian 
station  of  Kushk  is  only  one  hundred  and  twenty 
kilometres  from  Herat.  The  Trans-Siberian  railroad 
with  its  numerous  stations,  its  branch  lines  to  Khabarovsk, 
Port  Arthur,  and  Pekin,  and  the  annexed  systems  that 
penetrate  the  Chinese  Empire,  has  consolidated  all  that 
was  accomplished  by  the  venturesome  explorers  of  former 
times,  from  Irmak  or  Khabarof  to  Lieutenant  Nevelskoi 
of  our  day.  The  principal  line,  six  thousand  two  hun- 
dred kilometres  long,  with  its  bridges  of  eight  hundred 
metres  over  the  Obi  and  the  Irtysh,  of  one  thousand 
metres  over  the  Yenisei  and  the  Selenga,  with  its  ferry- 
boat, one  hundred  metres  long,  that  ferries  the  trains 
across  the  southern  bay  of  Lake  Baikal,  permits  the 
transportation   of  colonists,   merchants,   regiments,   and 


FROM  THE  BALTIC  TO  THE  PACIFIC.  95 

brings  to  bear  upon  the  further  side  of  Asia  all  the  power 
of  the  Czar  who  reigns  at  St.  Petersburg.  In  1889, 
the  merchants  of  Nizhni  Novgorod,  in  an  address  to  the 
Emperor  Alexander  III.,  predicted  in  these  terms  the 
brilliant  future  of  the  Trans-Siberian  :  "  It  will  unite  to 
Europe,  through  the  Russian  Empire,  four  hundred 
millions  of  Chinese,  and  forty-two  millions  of  Japanese. 
One  will  be  able  to  go  from  Europe  to  Shanghai  by 
Vladivostock  in  twenty  days  instead  of  the  thirty-five 
which  the  Canadian  route  requires,  or  the  forty-five  of 
the  Suez  route."  The  distance  between  Europe  and  the 
Far  East  will  still  be  further  shortened  by  the  extension 
of  the  Russian  railroad  to  Port  Arthur.  In  the  commerce 
of  the  world,  the  Trans-Siberian  will  work  as  important 
a  revolution  as  did  the  discovery  of  the  Cape  of  Good 
Hope  in  the  fifteenth  century,  or  the  construction  of  the 
Suez  Canal  in  the  nineteenth.  The  future  policy  of 
Russia  will  be  to  secure  the  full  attainment  of  what  she 
has  been  striving  after  for  centuries  in  her  onward  march 
through  the  Siberian  wilds,  that  is,  access  to  seas  free 
from  ice,  where  her  fleets  of  war  and  commerce  may 
have  unhindered  course.  Russia  is  attaining  this  freedom 
of  the  sea  four  hundred  years  later  than  Spain,  Portugal, 
France,  England,  and  Holland.  She  has  lost  nothing  in 
having  waited  so  long.  Thus  far,  she  has  passed  through 
the  Baltic  and  the  Mediterranean  periods,  with  a  power 
for  expansion  unknown  to  her  predecessors.  She  is 
about  to  maugurate  a  new  era  in  her  history  ;  the  oceanic, 
the  world-wide  era,  is  merely  beginning  for  the  Slav. 


The  International  Monthly. 

€HE  INTERNATIONAL  MONTHLY 
gives  to  the  general  reader  a  popular, 
adequate  understanding  of  progress  in  the  sev- 
eral departments  of  thought  and  work. 

The  great  specialism  which  is  characteristic  of 
the  times,  renders  it  impossible  for  one  person 
to  get  a  comprehension  of  all  the  greater  dis- 
coveries and  advances  in  human  culture  ;  and  it 
is  with  this  idea  in  view  that  The  Internation- 
al Monthly  has  organized  an  association  of 
eminent  scholars  of  America,  and  Europe,  and 
through  their  active  co-operation  the  articles 
and  papers  published  in  The  International 
Monthly  are  secured.  This  organization  and 
method  is  a  guarantee  of  the  value  and  timeli- 
ness of  the  essays  which  appear,  and  assures  the 
reader  that  he  is  in  close  touch  with  the  pro- 
gressive work  of  the  day. 

The  journal  is  arranged  in  departments  and 
each  department  has  its  own  editorial  direction. 


PUBLISHED    AT    BURLINGTON,  VERMONT. 

$3  a  Year.    Single  Copies,  25  Cents. 

Write  for  a  Prospectus. 


THE  INTERNATIONAL  flONTHLY. 

Advisory    Board. 

Literature — William  P.  Treut,  Columbia  t^nfi". ;  Richard  Garnett, 

London;  Gustav  Lanson,  Paris;  Alois  Brandl,  Univ.  of  Ber- 
lin. 
Fine  Art — John  C.  Van  Dyke,  Butgers  College ;  Georges  Perrot, 

Ecole  Normale,  Paris;  Adolph  Furtwangler,  Univ.  of  Munich. 
Science  of  Beligion — C.  H.  Toy,  Harvard    Univ. ;    Jean  Eeville, 

Univ.  of  Paris ;  F.  B.  Jevons,  Univ.  of  Durham;  C.  P.  Tiele, 

Univ.  of  Leiden;  Ths.  Achelis,  Bremen. 
Psychology — Edward  B.   Titcliener,  Cornell   Univ. ;   George  F. 

Stout,    Univ.  of  Oxford;  Th.  Ribot,  Paris;   Oswald  Kulpe, 

Univ.  of  Leipzig. 
Philosophy — Josiah  Royce,  Harvard  Univ.;  XavierLeon,  Paris; 

Paul  Natorp,    Univ.  of  Marburg ;  George  F.  Stout,    Univ.  of 

Oxford. 
History — J.    H.  Robinson,   Columbia   Univ. ;    Karl  Lamprecht, 

Univ.  of  Leipzig ;  M.  Seignobos,  Paris. 
Sociology — Franklin   H.    Giddings,    Columbia     Univ. ;    Gabriel 

Tarde,  College  of  France;  Georg    Simrael,  Univ.  of  Berlin; 

J.  S.  Mackenzie,  Cardiff,  Wales. 
Biology — Charles  0.  "Whitman,  Univ.  (f  Chicago ;  Raphael  Blan- 

chard,  Univ.  of  Paris;  Edward  B.  Poulton,  Univ.  of  Oxford; 

Wilhelm  Roux,  Univ.  of  Halle. 
Medicine — D.   B.   St.   John   Roosa,   Pres.    Graduate  School   rf 

Medicine;  Carl  Von  Noorden,    Frankfurt,   a.   M. ;    Photino 

Panas,  Univ.  of  Paris. 
Geology — Joseph  Le  Conte,  Univ.  of  California ;  Sir   Archibald 

Geikie,  London;  Hermann  Credner,  Univ.  of  Leipzig. 
Economics  and  Commerce — J.  "W.  Jenks,  Cornell   Univ.;  Eugen 

Schwiedland,  ["«;)•.  of  Vienna  ;  Andre  Lebon,  Paris. 
EDITOR  :  Frederick  A.  Richardson,  Burlington,  Vt. 

International  Politics. 

This  department  is  under  the  direction  of  Prof.  J.  B.  Moore,  of 
Columbia  Univ.,  formerly  Assistant  Secretary  of  State  and  lately 
of  the  Peace  Commission  at  Paris.  There  will  be  correspond- 
ents in  Spain,  Italy,  Russia,  Great  Britain,  Germany,  France, 
Austria,  and  Turkey. 


Some  Contributors   to  The 
International   Monthly* 


EdoLiard  Rod 
N.  S.  Shaler 
Charles  De  Kay 
John  Trowbridge 
W.  J.  Stillman 
C.  H.  Toy 
W.  W.  Ireland 
Patrick  Geddes 
W.  P.  Trent 
E.  P.  Clark 
L.  M.  Keasbey 
Brander  Matthews 
H.  T.  Finck 
E.  L.   Zalinski 
Oliver  J.  Lodge 
R.  W.  Wilcox 
John  R.  Procter 
Russell  Sturgis 
Harold  Jacoby 


Wm.  Lindsay 
Edmund  Buckley 
Frank  J.  Goodnow 
Th.  Ribot 

William  Morton  Payne 
J.  H,  Robinson 
Edmund  B.  Wilson 
Cyrus  Edson 
E.  B.  Titchener 
Theodor  Barth 
Alfred  Rambaud 
Adna  F.  Weber 
Andrew  C.  Lawson 
George  F.  Hoar 
Booker  T.  Washington 
A.  L.  Frothingham,  Jr. 
L.  Marillier 
A.  D.  Morse 
John  La  Farge 


SOME    CONTRIBUTORS    TO    THE    INTERNATIONAL 
MONTHLY. 

[Concluded.] 

Franklin  H.  Giddings        James  Sully 


W.  G.  Sumner 
Paul  H.  Hanus 
William  B.  Scott 
Josiah  Royce 
Dana  C.  Munro 
Hans  Prutz 
Gustav  Lanson 
Edmund  Gosse 
William  Archer 
Kuno  Francke 
Will  II.   Low 
Bishop  Potter 
F.  B.  Jevons 
Alfred  Fouillce 
|.  Novicow 
Oswald  Kulpe 


Geo.  F.  Stout 
James  Geikie 
Warren  Upham 
Thomas  H.  Morgan 
Edw.  B.  Poulton 
Carl  von  Noorden 
Photino  Panas 

C.  Guy 

Francis  H.  Williams 
F.  Marion  Crawford 
Herbert  Putnam 

D.  B.  St.  John  Roosa 
Bernard  Bosancjuet 

E.  Charlton  Black 
Albert  Bushnell  Hart 
Emil  Reich 


The    International    Monthly, 

Published  at  Burlington,  Vermont, 
$3.00  a  year ;  25  cts.  a  number. 


V 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 

1 

PHOIVE  RENl 

:WALS 

te  wji'  ■ 

■•■;^t- 

1  im» 

JUH231987 

Form  L9-Series  4939 

DK       66,        R1A7E 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY^ 


AA    000  696  408    4 


3  1158  01067  359" 


